


Let The Curtain Fall

by thesonder



Series: The Soldier & The Spy [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Avengers Family, Best Friends, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Canon Compliant, Canon Dialogue, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Drama, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Natasha Romanov & Laura Barton Friendship, On the Run, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partners to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Slightly - Freeform, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Tragic Romance, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 49,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25839691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesonder/pseuds/thesonder
Summary: Truth and lies. Dead or alive. Conflict encircles them everywhere they go.It's been almost six months since Natasha left Steve in the graveyard in DC, and it remains relatively unclear what they are. One thing Steve does know though, is that Natasha seemingly wants nothing to do with him. However, with everything that's going on around them, soon it may not matter."Staying together is more important than how we stay together."And maybe that's enough.Second part of my Rewriting Romanogers series, covering movies Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War.It is recommended you read part 1, Lost In Translation, before reading this part.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: The Soldier & The Spy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871884
Comments: 65
Kudos: 137





	1. There's Nothing You Could Do Or Say - Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ttwastony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ttwastony/gifts).



> Part 2/3 of this huge mf fic.  
> This has a cyclical narrative with present, third person tense and multiple POVs, usually Steve and Natasha's.  
> Reading Part 1 is recommended, but not compulsory as The Soldier & The Spy is reasonably canon plot-wise, so easy to understand if you have watched the movies.
> 
> Leave a comment letting me know what you want to see!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild warning for depression and triggering topics in this chapter, it’s vague but kinda deep so pls be careful <3  
> This chapter is ridiculously depressing and sad, I know, but trust me, it is about to get a whole lot better. Like domestic Avengers playing Mario Kart better. So stick with it, it will be worth it. Natasha just isn’t feeling great. :’)

i love you - Billie Eilish 

LOCATION(S): VOLOGRAD, RUSSIA, 48.7080° N, 44.5133° E  
DATE(S): 10/05/2014- 03/09/2015

Whenever the sun rises on a new day, there is always a hope that this one will be different, that perhaps today this day won't be filled with mind numbing depression just like all the others, and it won't bestow upon you the heaviness in your bones that makes you just want to stay where you are, in bed, all day and let the world pass you by. But today isn’t any different. It’s just the same. 

When the bleak sun rises on Natasha as she gets up to a new day no better than the last, and she gets dressed into her most nondescript clothes, and gets in the car loaned to her by Fury on her travels, and drives in the early hours of the morning through the rain that splatters on her windshield and is swiped away by the wipers, she realises. It is not a beautiful day. What little of the sun had shown that morning has now been shrouded by large, flat, chalky white clouds, and now the day sits morose underneath the harsh, pale, sky that glares down on Natasha like a particularly strict teacher watching her least favourite class taking a ridiculously difficult test.

It’s never sunny in Russia.

It’s not like Natasha isn't used to being alone, because she is. Hell, sometimes she wouldn't see another soul for weeks. It's just that… she preferred _not_ being alone. She preferred being with... him. The world seemed better that way. And she can’t mope over it, or weep over her own personal regrets, because she brought it on herself. She just keeps telling herself to suck it up, because nothing’s ever going to change.

Natasha has been staying in Russia for a few months now. She has constructed a new cover for herself that can carry her over the entirety of Russia and into a few European countries if she needs to, but for now she is content to stay in the apartment she has found on the edge of Volograd, previously Stalingrad. Her supposed place of birth, but who the hell knows anything about that.

For the past couple weeks, Natasha has been trying to find something to occupy her treacherous mind as the new year draws around. She had spent Christmas alone this year, something that she was, again, used to. She didn't really like holidays anyway. She had sat alone in her living room as crisp, fresh snow fell outside and melted as soon as it hit the sidewalk, browsing the television channels and waiting for this horrific day to pass. She had received celebrational, festive messages from most of the Avengers gradually over the holiday period, but the only one she had really been waiting for, never came. She should be glad - this is what she wanted, but her heart can't help but tell another story. 

Living in her alleged place of birth had, however, enabled Natasha to do some research into her past prior to her initiation to the Red Room, and it had yielded some promising results. And so this was where she was headed. Towards these promising results.

Initially, a woman had contacted her claiming to have information on Natasha’s parents, something Natasha was immediately suspicious of, but she decided to check it out anyway, hoping for at least a lead on their identity and perhaps current location. This woman had given her a set of coordinates accompanied by the locator digits X3 and X4. These coordinates are where Natasha is headed now.

The rain has gradually cleared up by the time Natasha nears where the coordinates had said her parents last known location was. She parks her car a couple blocks from the address noted, and gets out. Under her feet, the new puddles splash in the cold, and water drips from the tall streetlights and creates running streams that gurgle in the gutters of nearby houses.

As soon as she had arrived in Russia, Natasha had let her hair go back to it’s natural wavy state, and over time curls had formed at the bottom of her hair. She had also cut it again after it grew long back to shoulder length, and in the lack of sun the colour has darkened slightly, leaving it a darker red rather than orange. Change is a delicate matter. In the damp rain, it frizzes a little, and she pats it down nervously. 

Yeah, she’s nervous. She has no idea what she is about to encounter here. None, at all. Suddenly hyper-aware of her appearance to outsiders, as little as there may be, Natasha pulls the hood on her jacket up over her head to cover her bright red hair and pale face, and turns yet another corner.

On the right of her down this new road scattered with rare, occasional whooshing cars, is a small church and surrounding graveyard, and on the left across the road from Natasha is an abandoned row of shops, with one lonely pawn shop still open at the end. What a miserable place this is, she thinks. It’s completely deserted. 

After walking this entire road and turning another right, Natasha stops. Then she realises she is completely lost. Sighing, she fishes around for the paper with the location on it in her pocket. When she pulls it out, she looks up at her surroundings and then back down at the paper. The road she is on is wrong. She must have gone too far, but she also has not yet encountered the road referred to on this paper. She's really confused now.

Natasha backtracks her steps, retracing the route she had gone from the car, her eyes fixed on the paper in front of her trying to work it out. When she thinks she has reached the place that she accidentally passed that is mentioned on this paper, she stops and looks up again.

In front of her is the church. Natasha’s eyebrows furrow. What, are they church workers now? 

And then it hits her.

Her mouth drops open and a quiet, choked gasp comes out of her mouth. In a daze, her eyes sweep the rows upon rows of graves that sit in clusters around the church, and slowly fill with tears.

_Found them._

She looks back down at the paper, and up again, checking once and then again. This is the right road, the coordinates translated exactly into this address. The last part of the message sticks out at her.

X3 and X4.  
The locations of their graves.

Natasha enters the churchyard, walking almost at snail's pace through the muddy and cracked paths. At the end of each row sits a letter of the alphabet. 

She keeps walking, travelling further down the alphabet with every step: _...H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O_ \- but then it stops. Natasha looks up and sees she has reached the church’s front door. Now completely bewildered, Natasha retraces her steps _again_ , checking the rows to confirm she hadn't missed it. But no. X is nowhere to be seen. She then raises her head and surveys the rest of the church and graveyard, scanning it in detail, including the way the graves reach around to the corners of every crevice of the church. They fill the grass, even getting as far as the edge of a chain link fence that cuts the graveyard off from the rest of the world. Natasha can't pin why, but that one specific little clump of small gravestones in that corner of the graveyard pulls at her. It feels out of character for her parents, even if she never knew them, to be buried front and center. They seem more like afterthoughts, just like she had been. And so Natasha follows the pull, venturing off the path and between rows to get to that one corner.

As she passes numerous graves, some harbouring an odd dying bunch of flowers or a candle long fizzled out, the fear inside her grows. She somehow knows what she is about to find, but it still scares her. It seems too real. This is it. This is the end of her mystery. She's just a forgotten orphan. The child that nobody wanted. 

When she reaches them, she can immediately see that these graves are cracked in multiple places, and obviously extremely old. Weeds sprout up around the bases of them, and the occasional ivy crawls up the side and wraps around the top. Beneath a tree that sits to the right of the small handful of graves and overshadows them, sits a small placard with the letter X scrawled on it.

Afterthoughts.

Natasha crouches down to the two graves sitting on the end, so close together that they're touching. She outstretches her hand and tears away a long string of ivy that drapes over the front of the stone graves. 

And there they are.

On the right, slap in the centre of the stone.

_Romanov, Male  
Died May 23 1987_

And to the left

_Romanova, Female  
Died April 18 1987_

No name, no date of birth. Just their last name, gender and date of death. They had died when Natasha was less than three years old. Within just about a month of each other.

No epitaph, no eulogy, no small line about how they used to be as people. Nothing. Just this.

This is the last she has of her parents.

Natasha stares down bitterly at the adjoining graves as tears fill her eyes and gradually spill over. She shouldn't be this sad. She never knew them. She never remembered any part of them. Her only memories came after she was initiated into the Red Room.

But she can't help but wonder who she got her hair from, and her eyes, and whether it was her dad who gave her her laugh, or her mum who gave her the habit of biting her lip which she does so often now. There's so much she missed out on asking them. So much she wishes she knew.

With a finger, Natasha traces the worn out letters of the name across her mother’s gravestone. Romanova. She had changed it to Romanoff when she defected from Russia, but she had always liked the old spelling of her name. The spike of the ‘v’ leaning into the curve of the ‘a’. As she reaches the end of the name and her depressing nostalgia, she takes a deep breath in, and gets to her feet. Looking at the graves like this, far too small in the eyes of Natasha in her tall shoes, pity fills her. She didn't know who these people were, but she doubts they deserved this corner of a shabby graveyard in a deserted ghost town. Determined to do something, even if it wasn't much, Natasha looks around the graveyard.

Besides from the rows upon rows of uneven gravestones, Natasha can see a patch of untouched grass just beyond the wall of the old church. In it sits a tiny patch of chamomile flowers, essentially looking just like large daisies. They stand content in the non-existent breeze, a little sloping and bent in their stems, but good enough for her.

Natasha goes over and picks as many as she can find. When she returns, she places the flowers carefully on the ground next to her and bends over the graves. There, she wrenches the weeds that surround the grave up from the ground, throwing them far away. She does this until almost all of the weeds and vines are gone, leaving the gravestones bare in comparison to their fellows. Then she picks up the small bunch of flowers, splits them in two and lays a small pile on each of the graves. 

Natasha steps back to admire her work. It's at this point she wishes she had someone with her, because she really just feels like collapsing into someone’s arms about now. But instead she just stares on at the graves and their words etched across it. _Died._ They died. Her parents died. There had been the slightest chance, a glimmer of hope in Natasha at the beginning, that they were alive, and that Natasha would be able to see them again, to reunite with them in the type of scenario you only see in movies. But little Natasha, lying in her bed in the Red Room and dreaming of the day she would meet her parents again, she should have learnt. It's just the movies. Life doesn't work that way.

Things can be lost in a split second, and if you don't value them when they are here, they'll be gone before you know it. We have what we have when we have it.

Taking one last deep breath in and then out, Natasha turns and leaves the graveyard.

As soon as she arrives home, she heads straight for the cabinet on her wall and pulls down a bottle of vodka. Natasha doesn't like to cry, so on any given day she would definitely rather drown her sorrows in a bottle than cry it out. She collapses on the sofa, clicking one button on the TV remote that turns on some inconsequential game show, and lets the buzz of the electronic voices coax her into a deep state of self-pity and alcoholism.

And that's how she goes. Day after day, hazing into month after month, every day a bleary haze of depression as she lives in isolation, cutting herself off from the only family she’s ever known. 

So much so, that when the winter of 2014 melts away into the spring of 2015 and Natasha gets the call from Nick Fury that it is finally happening, it feels like a miracle. She had felt herself fading in recent days, and didn't know how longer she could go on.

But now she's going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aye so this was one depressing chapter weren't it… sorry bout that, Natasha just doesn't do well on her own, no matter how much she may pretend she does. I would like to point out that this is not an accurate depiction of Russia, its actually very nice, but for dramatic effect and stuff this town is a ghost town (no pun intended) thank u v much.  
> Okay, so Natasha is going back to the Avengers, for those who didn't clock it. Avengers, reassemble! The next chapter is going to be a lot more lighthearted so don't worry.  
> I'll see you all soon!
> 
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	2. I Hate Accidents Except When We Went From Friends To This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE FLUFF! IN THIS CHAPTER! IS CRAZY!   
> We have: Ceiling Vent Clint Barton (an icon),   
> Avengers playing Mario Kart,   
> Avengers watching movies,   
> Avengers huddled on a sofa together,   
> falling asleep on each other… I mean, it's perfect.  
> This chapter was written solely to comfort me because I can't stop thinking about endgame and how much it SUCKED so i hope you enjoy this as much as i did.

Paper Rings - Taylor Swift 

LOCATION(S): AVENGERS TOWER, MANHATTAN, 40.7549° N, 73.9840° W  
DATE(S): 03/10/2014, 03/11/2014

Natasha knew that eventually this day would come, that she would go back to New York and the Avengers would come together again, but for her it couldn't have come soon enough. The Avengers are finally getting back together, this time to take down various particularly difficult HYDRA associations that have survived the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D and are now posing a threat.

Natasha leaves Russia the very next day, and arrives in Manhattan, where the Stark tower has now been renamed the Avengers Tower, just as the afternoon casts a ray of sunlight through the glass windows and into the inside. 

After Natasha’s bags have been taken from her up to her new private quarters (!) of the Tower, she enters the elevator by herself and it begins to rise.

As soon as she had entered the building, she had automatically felt lighter. She could see her friends again, her brothers, her _family_. They were what gave her purpose in this world she tried so hard to find a place in. 

The first thing she sees when the elevator doors open is Clint holding a bowl of cereal as he stands by the counter. Immediately a laugh escapes her lips at the unsurprising but still delightful absurdity of her best friend eating cereal at six in the evening. Clint looks round at the sound, and makes a surprised exclamation as best as he can with a mouthful of cereal, immediately putting down the bowl and running to meet Natasha as she exits the elevator. They meet and she hugs Clint tight, feeling so relieved to be back with the people she knows best. When they break apart, she sees a small handful of other Avengers, having already arrived, sitting grouped in this weird levelled kind of open living room. Tony and Bruce stand as she walks over, and she hugs both of them briefly.

“And I thought I was late! Half of the others aren't even here yet!” she comments as the group moves back over to the living room to sit back down. Natasha takes a standing position against the counter with Clint, who has resumed his cereal eating. 

“So, Nat, where’d you come from?” Bruce asks politely.

“Uhh…” Natasha stumbles, reluctant to divulge the significance of her place of dwelling. “...Russia.” 

Clint looks round at her in shock and bewilderment, knowing perhaps a little more than most about how far down her past lies there.

“Well, you know what they say, go back to your roots, and all that.” Tony shrugs appreciatively. 

“Yeah…” Natasha agrees, and the small group settle into quiet conversation, Natasha talking to Clint and the science bros chatting a little way away. All the time though, Natasha’s heart sits beating fast in her chest, a constant reminder of the anticipation she is feeling waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Specifically one person.

She knows Steve had gone to look for Bucky with Sam, had seen one or two articles tracking their progress in a newspaper soon after their departure, but hasn't heard from him since. Which was what she wanted… of course.

Clint was telling Natasha how when he had first arrived, Tony had fixed bars around the vent covers to prevent him from climbing in them, and that he had spent an entire hour taking down before he managed to climb up into them, and Natasha was laughing uncontrollably, but then the elevator doors open and the smile drops from her face faster than Clint hitting the floor after being pushed out of a ceiling vent.

There, exiting the elevator next to Sam and Thor, is Steve. All three of them wear civilian clothes, but Thor still carries his hammer and Natasha can see hidden weapons under all their clothing. Everyone else in the room immediately turns and lets out ‘heyy’s and various other loud greetings, getting up to go and say hello, but Natasha stays rooted to the spot. After exchanging greetings with all of the other Avengers, Steve finally looks up and sees Natasha up by the counter.

And then it feels like it's just the two of them, because it has been so long since Natasha has seen his eyes. As the other Avengers chat among themselves, Steve stares at her for a moment, swallows and opens his mouth.

“Nat.” 

Natasha desperately tries to pull herself together to form an answer, but all she says from the other side of the room is, “Hi Steve.” 

With the exception of a few extremely confused glances from Clint between the two, their awkward encounter goes unnoticed and Steve, Sam and Thor blend into the group and all begin to socialise. Sam comes over to say hello to Natasha and she hugs him gladly, relieved to have someone who she isn't awkward around besides Clint. When Sam has left, Clint drags Natasha aside, eyes boggling as he gestures pointedly to her and Steve. Natasha swatts his hand down for fear of one of the other Avengers noticing, shushing him as he tries to speak.

“What? _What?_ ”

“What the hell happened there?” Clint hisses under his breath, still goggling at Steve who is busy integrating himself into conversation with the Avengers plus Sam. 

Natasha puts her head in her hands exasperatedly and shakes her head. “Not now, Clint.”

“I mean… _what? Natasha!_ ” he stammers in shock, still looking from her to Steve. 

Flush creeps up Natasha’s cheeks as she begins to back away, Clint trying to grab onto her as she goes. 

“Nope, nope, I am _not_ talking about it.” she swipes the air with her hands in denial. 

“But _Natas-_ ” Clint calls after her.

“Nope!” Natasha replies, speeding up to get away from Clint and moving smoothly into the throng of people. _Not today._

Night begins to fall on the Avengers tower and the group settles down, having at last caught up with each other. Fury is planning to contact them tomorrow with the takedown mission of a nearby HYDRA federation, but until then, the night is theirs.

No one much feels like partying at the moment, so they all gradually split off into small groups, Natasha still managing to avoid Steve the entire time. 

However, after about an hour, Natasha begins to hear shouting from the largest living/game room on the floor. After escorting Sam out of the door when he had to leave, she walks back to where she had heard it. Curious but not concerned, she heads towards the room and enters it to a very welcome sight.

The Avengers are all huddled round a huge plasma screen sitting high up on the wall. Steve and Tony sit in the centre of the throng, and they both hold mini steering wheels. When Natasha looks up to the screen, she sees that they are playing Mario Kart, and she can't help but grin widely. 

Everyone is shouting over each other, so it's hard to hear what each voice is saying, but Natasha gathers the gist that they are doing a tournament, and Tony is currently in the lead. He sits smugly, cruising in first place around Coconut Mall, while Steve sits close on his tail, his face furrowed in intense concentration as he tries to catch up.

They enter the second lap, Steve still struggling to overtake Tony. When Steve misses the shortcut there is a collective groan from the onlookers and infuriates shouts at Steve.

"You should've taken the shortcut!"

"You could have overtaken him there, ugh!"

"Man, you blew it!"

"Hey! I'd like to see _you_ all try and race Tony, there's literally _no_ beating him." Steve defends, jerking his steering wheel to the right to avoid a banana peel.

"Oh yeah? Bet." Clint says, leaning forward to grab some popcorn from the table in front of them.

Natasha stands in the doorway, arms crossed and shaking her head in delighted disbelief. 

From the screen, a short upbeat musical score announces the final lap.

"Come on, Capsicle, you gotta do better than that. It's just too easy at this point!" Tony grins, actually taking a sip of his drink while driving to show off.

Steve takes his hand off the wheel to flip Tony the middle finger, which not only causes a fresh round of mock shouts and gasps from the teammates at his vulgarity, but also sends Steve's car off the edge and into the pit below.

Steve throws his hands in the air as his place drops from second place to sixth, seventh, and then tenth, while everyone else groans.

"Booooo!" Clint shouts, sticking out a thumb down. 

And then Tony finishes and jumps to his feet in victory, doing a lap of the room while people cheer and clap begrudgingly. Steve throws his controller down in mock outage as the leaderboard comes up on screen and the race ends.

Natasha takes this as her cue and enters the room, edging her way into the centre of the group and picking up Steve's discarded controller. 

"You think you can beat me? Cause then it's game on, metal man." she smirks, sitting on the sofa as she aims her comment at Stark.

The rest of the room cheers loudly at the new challenge as Tony comes over to sit next to Nat.

"Alright then. Wanna place a bet?"

"It depends. What's your most valuable possession?" She plays with him.

"Oooh," Stark exclaims. "Someone's feeling confident."

"You bet I am. Now let's play." she says, and everyone's faces turn back to the screen.

The homepage loads, and Natasha chooses Princess Peach, along with a matching pink motorbike.

"Cute." Tony comments, earning himself a hard jab in the ribs from Natasha.

Tony chooses a standard kart with Mario as the driver, "Basic." Natasha retorts back, but then they are onto courses, and the group around them clamours for requests.

"Rainbow road, rainbow road!" Clint chants, punching the air with every syllable. 

Natasha takes control of the pointer and clicks on rainbow road, to a loud cheer from Clint and boos from the others who had wanted separate courses.

The course loads, the great sweeping motion of the camera showing the shimmery rainbow tracks of the race course. It brings back a little nostalgia to Natasha, because they as a group had been occasionally playing Mario Kart since the beginning and the first time they all arrived at Tony’s tower. The first time, Steve had been completely and utterly bewildered at how it worked, as had Thor, and to be honest _she_ had thought it was a little far-fetched too. But soon they were all addicted.

The countdown appears on the screen, _3...2...1…_ and then _GO!_

And they're off! Natasha is forced to make up for the loss in places that Steve had made in the last race, and so she is moving up from all the way down in seventh up and up to first, speedily overtaking Tony as they travel through the star vacuum. She smirks as she lands back on the course and zooms ahead, leaving Tony in the dust behind her. Everyone else is cheering again, overjoyed to see Tony humbled like this and Natasha soaring ahead. But then, just as she crosses the line for lap two, the beeping alarm at the bottom of the screen sounds, accompanied by the small blue shell icon. Natasha jumps to her feet in anger as her car is hit by the blue shell and she is sent back half a dozen places. Everyone roars in anguish and hails insults at Tony, obviously the sender of the blue shell. When the blue shell has finished attacking her, Natasha sits down again and desperately concentrates on trying to make up for her loss in competition. Leaning forward over her knees in order to get closer to the screen, she edges slowly up the places as they reach lap three, and now everyone is sitting with baited breath, waiting to see whether Natasha will catch up in time. She hails every red shell she receives in Tony’s direction, and she’s so close, just around the corner, flip in the air on this ramp there, get a speed boost here, invincible boost there, and then she is second place and getting closer to Tony every second. 

The end is in sight, the great banner overhead the black and white chequered line, and Tony’s little car is just a little ahead of her and determination runs a fire in her veins as Natasha implores the car to go just that little bit faster. 

And then, at the last second, she overtakes him, crosses the finish line, and it is done! She won! Everyone leaps to their feet immediately with cries of celebration and jumps around the living room. Tony gets to his feet and claps too, not too much of a bad loser. The smiles on everyone's faces reminds Natasha of why she missed home. This is fast becoming the family she never knew, solidified by the new fact that she has none outside this place. Natasha turns to Tony and holds out an amicable hand, which he takes.

“Good game Red.” he grins.

“Good game.” she echoes. “You’re still giving me a suit though.” She winks. 

Tony laughs as they return to the group who are still happily celebrating Tony’s defeat. Clint holds up a hand and Natasha smacks it in a high five, taking a seat back on the sofa between Steve and Tony. Steve looks at her, his smile the widest of all, and for once, she can’t help but smile back.

After universal agreement between all the Avengers that no one feels like sleeping just now, they all decide to watch a movie instead. Natasha, Thor and Clint want horror, but Steve is a baby and wants a boring documentary, whereas Tony and Bruce want sci-fi. In the end, Natasha and Clint's absolutely relentless pleading means that by ten o’clock in the evening, the Avengers are all huddled around the large plasma screen in semi to complete darkness, with the exception of occasional lighting up phone screens. 

However, it doesn't take long for people to realise that only one blanket can be found to sit comfortably under. After a split second of mischievous glances between all the Avengers, a great tug of war breaks out as people fight for the blanket. Eventually, Bruce has to break it up, and suggests they all just share it instead. And so, half way through the movie finds the Avengers all huddled beneath this one faded pink blanket Tony owns, a tangle of limbs and fingers forming a mass of superhero bodies. Whenever there is a jumpscare, everyone collectively jerks and the blanket slips, causing a massive disruption as arrangements are made to reposition the blanket so that everyone gets a piece. It’s almost comic.

Natasha herself sits squished right in the middle of the throng, Steve on her right and Bruce on her left. Clint sits half above her, sloping across the top half of the sofa, while Thor slumps lazily on a sofa arm and Tony perches on the side of another. Natasha’s heart feels so warm at the sight of all her family around her, and she never wants this moment to end. On her lap sits a great fat bowl of popcorn which each Avenger occasionally reaches their hand in to get a piece of. When Clint comes back for more little too soon, she slaps his hand away and he yelps a little and almost falls off the sofa. Apparently her slaps are harder than she had thought.

Despite how she had denied that she was absolutely not tired at all, as the night draws on and she lies here cozy and warm under the majority of the blanket and surrounded by those she loves in the place she loves, Natasha can’t help but feel herself slowly drifting off. Her head lolls, landing first on Bruce’s shoulder next to her, and then rocking back to land on another shoulder on her other side that she can't quite recall the owner of. But then she is asleep.

When the movie eventually ends and everyone begins moving and stretching, Steve looks down to where Natasha had fallen asleep on his shoulder half way through the movie, and his heart immediately warms, but then falls. They aren't together. He can't hold her the way he wants to. This has to stop. Clint is looking skeptically down at them, as is Bruce, but everyone else is getting to their feet and wandering around the large living room. Tony asks JARVIS to close the curtains and blinds throughout the tower and initiate extra nighttime security measures, before waving everyone goodnight and heading to bed in his quarters a couple floors below.

Thor cleans up the empty wrappers on the table, grabs his hammer, and leaves to do the same after a brief farewell.

Clint then rolls off the sofa and lands on the floor with a thud, standing to look at Natasha sandwiched between the two men. “One of you gonna take her to bed, yeah?” 

After ten seconds and no answer, Clint shrugs and leaves. He’s seen Natasha sleep on a bed of rocks before. She’ll be fine, even if they do decide to leave her on the sofa.

Back on said sofa, Steve stares awkwardly from Natasha to Bruce to his won shoulder on which she lies. 

“So..uhh.. Do you wanna just…” Bruce gestures behind him to the elevator where everyone had disappeared off to, obviously intending to leave, but Steve interrupts him. 

“No, no. You do it. I gotta… I’ll, I gotta go. Here.” Steve gently tips Natasha towards Bruce, eager to get up and leave, because the feelings for Natasha he had thought he had quashed are fast returning and he can't afford for that to happen. If he takes her to bed he might just end up falling in love with her again. Steve gets to his feet, flustered, looking once back at Bruce holding Natasha before leaving as fast as he can.

Bruce is then left to carry Natasha down to her floor and lie her on the bed, before leaving for his own bed.

And Steve is then left to lie in his bed and wonder whether the feelings resurfaced in him are the same for Natasha, or whether her head on his shoulder was simply an instinct. Even so, it’s an instinct that he thought had died.

But maybe now it hasn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I wanted to add a lot more in this chapter like their fight in Sudan and intercepting the jet plane, but I decided to just skip ahead to recapturing the sceptre and the beginning of he movie in the next chapter seeing as we have now reassembled and added some fluff and introduced Bruce’s relevance to Natasha in this chapter.
> 
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	3. Walking Back To You Is The Hardest Thing That I Can Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took sO long to get up, I have literally no motivation at the moment because I’m having to write br*tasha even though it's only temporary. Also warning for some SteveNat smut in this chapter, if you don't like it, don't read it.  
> Anyways here you go, long chapter for you all.

Just Like Honey - The Jesus and Mary Chain

LOCATION(S): AVENGERS TOWER, MANHATTAN, 40.7549° N, 73.9840° W, SOKOVIA, EASTERN EUROPE, 48.8087° N, 18.2324° E  
DATE(S): 03/11/2014- 03/17/2014

When Natasha wakes the next morning to the blinding glare of the sun through her large windows, the first thing she registers is the metal zip of her hoodie digging into her stomach. She rolls over and sits up with a groan, gradually gathering her senses. Then she looks down, and sees she is still wearing the clothes she was wearing yesterday, her grey hoodie open over her white top and black leggings - a perfect monochrome. In that moment, she remembers last night, and falling asleep in front of the movie, and is suddenly embarrassed. Normally she doesn't like to show vulnerability in front of people if she can avoid it, and she just freaking fell asleep in front of all of them. She blames it on Steve, because he always makes her feel safe when he is around her, no matter how much she might deny it. She can’t help but wonder if it was him who carried her to bed.

Raising a hand to her forehead to protect from the harsh sunlight and stave away a growing headache, Natasha swings her legs out from under the bed and gets to her feet. She hadn't even gotten drunk last night. Anyhow, a shower is much needed. She will figure things out from there.

Even though the Avengers all have their own fully self-sustaining floors, it seems to be an unspoken rule that they all travel to the middle floor that sits between their rooms and holds all the recreational rooms for their morning breakfast. So that’s what Natasha does, in her hoodie from yesterday, and when she enters the large communal kitchen, she sees Bruce sitting on a bar stool at the counter, behind which Steve is cooking something that smells amazing. Slightly hesitant but already halfway there now, Natasha enters the kitchen.

When she reaches the bar where Bruce sits talking to Steve, they both turn to see her.

“Oh, hey Natasha. You look, um…” Bruce trails off awkwardly, looking in concern at her old, wrinkled clothes. Behind him Natasha can see Steve, who can’t stop smiling in absolute joy. She wants to punch him in his perfect teeth.

She throws a grimace in answer at Bruce before taking a seat at the bar.

“What we making?” she asks in a fake cheery voice, her arms crossed across her chest.

Steve glances back to the stove where his fruit of labor was cooking to check it isn’t burning, before turning back to them sitting at the bar. 

“Pancakes.” he answers, reaching behind him to grab the toppings he had assembled. Maple syrup, chocolate syrup, butter squares, sugar, and some bacon sizzling in a frying pan behind him.

“Interesting choice.” Natasha raises her eyebrows at Steve.

“So, uh…did you sleep well?” Bruce asks conversationally to Natasha.

“Well, I mean, I ended up in bed, which is an achievement. I need to thank whoever did that or I might have ended up waking up with popcorn on my face or something.” She looks at Bruce. “Who was it, was it you?” She remembers sitting next to him.

Bruce flushers, and stammers, “Uh..well, yeah it was. I just...yeah.” 

At the stove, Steve’s eyes fall down forlornly and fix on his cooking pancakes, determined not to move as the memories of Natasha falling asleep on him last night and his flustered request for Bruce to take her to bed fills his head.

“Oh, that’s so nice. Thanks, anyway.” Natasha says a little distractedly, because she had seen Steve freeze in the corner of her eye over at the stove.

“No problem.” Bruce smiles awkwardly.

The pancakes are cooked and served on a large platter, and gradually the rest of the Avengers wake and congregate in the kitchen, each snatching a plate of pancakes and dousing them in piles of chocolate or maple syrup. Natasha sits with Bruce at breakfast and they chat together along with the other guys. After breakfast, Natasha and Bruce take a walk around the streets of Manhattan as the sun rises higher and higher into the sky. As they walk, Bruce talks to Natasha about him and the Hulk.

“The only thing that has ever worked on calming the Hulk down, in my whole entire memory and time spent being the Hulk… it’s this one phrase that someone...used to say to me. ‘The sun’s getting real low’. Something about the sun falling, setting, for the Hulk... it does something… I don't know…” he tells Natasha as they round a corner.

“Are you saying there's a chance to calm the Hulk down, while he’s in form?” Natasha asks disbelievingly. If what he is saying is true, it could mean big change for the Avengers.

“Hypothetically, yes.” 

“Bruce, that's amazing!” Natasha cries, stopping in her footsteps and turning to face Bruce. “Do you know what that could mean?” 

“It might not work, I haven't tried it… told anyone in God knows how long..” Bruce shuffles his feet.

“But now I know, we can try it!” Natasha enforces.

“I mean, maybe, yeah.”

And so that’s what they do. The very next mission Fury sends them on. And the thing is, _it works._

So it becomes her thing. Because no one else knows how she does it or why it works, and Natasha doesn't want to betray Bruce’s trust by telling them how. She also finds that touch helps; contact. This, however, is dangerous, so she has to be careful doing it. But it _works_ , and finally they have a way to semi-control the Hulk. It's amazing!

And no one understands it, least of all Steve, which is the main reason why jealousy courses through his veins like fire. Every night, his dreams taint him with blissful visions of Natasha’s head tucked under his chin as they lie in bed together, that morph into alien images of her and Bruce, in love, and kissing, and horrible, nauseating stuff that makes Steve wake in cold sweats every time. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it rules Steve’s every notion.

And so when the day comes when he leads the Avengers into battle once again, the unhappiness that had built in him makes its way out into his work, and he focuses all his energy in on it. Today they are travelling rather a long way, all the way across the world to Eastern Europe to where a country Steve has never heard of sits. Sokovia, bordered by the Czech Republic and Slovakia, is a snow region, despite its location in the middle east, and Steve is rather excited. It's been so long since he's seen snow.

The morning of the attack dawns and him and the rest of the Avengers spend the morning preparing for battle. Steve has sent Sam off on what looked like another lead as to Bucky's location, so the two will both be completing missions at the same time. He hopes Sam finds something, because they could really use some success in their personal endeavor. Midday rolls around and the Avengers load themselves onto a speedy Quinjet that will take them to Sokovia undercover. Steve can't help but notice Natasha avoiding him again.

Which she is, of course, but only because she is actually feeling incredibly awkward around him. Last night had done a number on her. She had drifted off to sleep relatively easily, but once there, her brain had decided to taunt her mercilessly.

In her dream, she was in that small room on the helicarrier, the infirmary where he had bandaged her up years ago. Steve was there, the door was locked, and they were alone. She had kissed him, fervently, desperately, with a kind of raw hunger never before manifested in her. Her hands had crawled ravenously up Steve's shirt as they kissed, tracing the rock hard contours of his abs and moving to rest heatedly on his chest. Steve's hands had played with the hem of the t-shirt that she was wearing in response, before sliding up and toying with her bra as he removed it deftly. He had touched her there, caressing her so delicately, like she was the most important, the most precious, thing in the world to him.

They had then moved to a wall on one side of the infirmary as they breathed heavily against each other, Steve pressing Natasha against the wall. As he had planted kisses down her jawline and neck, hot desire had begun pooling in the pit of Natasha's stomach and between her legs. Steve's hands had traveled there then, slow and deliberate in their movements that made Natasha gasp into Steve's neck and clutch at his shoulders.

From there, Steve had pulled at the rest of Natasha’s clothes, tearing them off as she did the same to him. The scratches left on Steve's back would fade by morning, but the feeling of his lips on her skin would stay there forever.

When she woke, it was with such a loud gasp, such a powerful start that it rendered her head spinning as she jerked up. She had looked around the bed she sat in, slowly registering that it had been a _dream_. Then she had groaned, putting her head in her hands in shame, embarrassed at her own self and her subconscious mind. It had been a _dream_.

This was the reason why when Natasha had boarded the jet and seen Steve for the first time since last night, her face had flushed a bright red, because she couldn't stop remembering the way he had moaned with her in her dream. That was not something she was likely to forget anytime soon. 

And then the jet took off into the sky, and Natasha pulled her seatbelt across her lap as if it could ground her the way the pieces of her dream were trying their best not to. 

They were in the sky for a good few hours on the way to Sokovia, and when they landed, the air was noticeably colder, wind whipping Natasha’s face in a chilly but welcome breeze. In their suits, the Avengers all snuck as quickly as they could into the outskirts of the city of Sokovia as they neared the HYDRA research base that was their target today.

In this great expanse of woods in which they landed, the snow was crunchy underfoot and the trees reached high into the air like soldiers standing to attention. Her face gets hot thinking of something else that was standing to attention in her dream, but then noises in the distance break her from her reverie. Apparently this area of the woods is still on the grounds of the research base, and the sensors have caught them, because guards come in swarms towards them in these huge bulky trucks, and all eyes of the team turn to them.

“Alright! Clint, Nat, Thor, take the guards! Tony, work on getting to the research base first! We need to know how to get inside that thing! We’ll all work our way towards it and meet you there!” Steve yells as the men approach. “Oh, and Hulk, do your thing!” he yells as an afterthought towards the big green monster already rampaging his way towards the guards in cars.

And then the battle begins. Natasha jumps onto a car passing her and kicks the guard driving it in the head, taking control of the wheel as the car goes zooming through the underbrush. Clint jumps in the back just in time and they use the car to drive a path through the swarms of men that have now appeared to attack them. Natasha can see another car nearing up behind them out of the corner of her eye just as Clint takes out guards from the back of this truck she drives, and takes a second as an iron robot comes out of nowhere to attack her. She kicks it out and to the floor with one foot, where she runs it over for good luck before continuing her trek through the fort towards the base. Iron Man soars overhead just then, rocketing towards the research base on the tall hill ahead of them, which Natasha can just see the tip of.

Just then, the identical truck that had been drawing up behind them reaches them, and a man inside aims a blast at Clint standing in the back, but then Thor jumps down on the truck and disarms all the men before taking off away from them to a launch tower. After taking down all the men shooting guns up on it, he jumps down and lands in the snow, only to be overtaken by Steve riding on a motorbike stolen off one of the guards. He drags one of the men Thor had let escape behind him for a while as the motorbike skids through the trees, before flinging him up and into a snowpile in the distance.

Steve reaches for the shield off his back just as he steers the motorbike up a steep slope lined with guards and throws it in their direction, taking them all out in quick succession, not unlike a domino line. His shield flies back to him and he slams it back on his back as he moves through more trees, but then is forced to brake and skid when he sees Thor and Iron Man right in front of him, sending an exploding truck into the air, which the nearby Hulk catches with a roar and throws away, making way for Natasha and Clint in their truck who have caught up to the others. 

They have all neared the base now, and are only a couple hundred meters away. The forest has ended, and now they will have to go on foot, as Natasha in her truck can see a barbed wire fence barrier with a line of guards behind it, and it’s coming up fast. Vaguely sensing the other Avengers assembled behind her, she swerves the truck to its side just before the barbed wire and jumps out of it into the air. Right next to her she feels all the other Avengers do the same, Clint with an arrow poised towards the waiting guards, her with her leg pointed forward, Steve on her other side on his motorbike, Tony above them flying with his repulsors, Thor summoning a strong of lightning with his hammer and the Hulk bellowing with a raised fist as they all simultaneously cross the barrier and take down every single guard waiting in line for them on the other side,

Efficiency, Natasha must admit, has its benefits.

Steve and Tony then take ahead, nearing a grey brick wall ahead of them which more guards sit behind, aiming explosion launchers at them. Tony explodes the wall with his repulsors and Steve takes down the remaining guards: a team. Tony then continues up and over the scene of destruction and the treeline towards where the base sits on the huge hill. From the top of it, blasts are being sent his way in some kind of defense mechanism they have installed in this ancient castle-like building, which Tony dodges to avoid as they come. However, just as he reaches the roof of the building and moves to knock the edge of it off, a huge blue electric force field blocks his way, sending him spiralling backwards. 

“Shit!” he yells.

“Language!” Steve calls back through his intercom from the ground. “JARVIS, what's the view from upstairs?”

Up above the Earth, in a satellite connected to the Avengers tower, JARVIS watches on.

“The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield. Strucker's technology is well beyond any other HYDRA base we've taken.” he comments as Thor brings on a new round of guards holding purply electric looking weapons. Advanced technology is an understatement. 

"Loki's scepter must be here. Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it." Thor explains to the others, swinging his hammer in his hand as he takes out more guards. "At long last." he murmurs triumphantly. After so long, they have finally captured the location of the sceptre again.

Further back in the throng, Natasha battles guards on foot. She snatches a grenade from one of the guards and throws it onto the floor of another truck as she runs. The car explodes behind her as she jumps down from another mounted defense of sandbags to the ground. Rolling on the impact, Natasha jumps back up and knocks out yet another guard attacking her. 

But then two more come at her and she has to jump up onto one, her thighs wrapping around his neck as she swings around and uses the body below her to defeat the other guy, and finish by kicking a blow at both of them. They fall to the ground and she jumps off them and rises to her knees.

“"At long last is lasting a little long, boys." 

As she says this, she reaches around her waist to where she stashes her bullet packs and grabs a gun from the fallen man, smashing the pack into the handle of the gun and arming herself once again.

Then she holds the gun up to the men attacking from behind the sandbags and shoots them down.

From further away on a slight slope, Clint ducks behind a tree to avoid a blast.

"Yeah. I think we lost the element of surprise." he agrees.

 _Well, it's not like they ever had it,_ Natasha thinks, but she refrains from commenting.

Then from up above the HYDRA base, Tony soars back down towards them.

"Wait a second. No one else is going to deal with the fact that Cap just said 'language?'" Tony quips, and Steve down on the ground rolls his eyes as he speeds over snowy ground on his motorbike.

"I know," he says, before flipping himself gracefully over the handlebars of the bike and swinging the bike in the direction of a group of oncoming guards in a truck.

The bike embeds itself in the truck, sending it tipping up into the air and propelling all the guards from inside it. Out of breath, Steve pants, "It just slipped out."

After JARVIS notifies Tony that the city below the hill is beginning to take fire from the blasts sent by the HYDRA base, Tony sends in his Iron Legion to help evacuate the city. Not that it helps much. Apparently, Tony Stark and his 'circus freaks' are not welcome here. Sokovia is not a fan of their tricks.

A little way away from Natasha fighting ground guards, Clint is hiding behind a tree for cover as he tries to take down a bunker with a rotating gun sat on top. However, just as he dives out from the tree to take a shot, something flashes past him and hits him in his side, and he goes tumbling to the ground. Above Clint lying on the ground walks a man, seemingly normal on the outside. His accent slurs as he speaks, clearly Sokovian,

“What, you didn't see that coming?”

Clint hadn't _seen_ it at all, that was kind of the point. The flash in which he disappears is unnatural, inhuman, and when Clint jumps to his feet and aims an arrow after the strange man, he is already gone. He reluctantly lowers the bow. But then from behind him the gun sitting on the bunker serves towards him and sends a blast that hits Clint’s side and pain explodes in his body. He buckles with a yell.

Natasha, hearing the yell and seeing Clint fall as she turns, abandons her fight and runs to her fallen teammate. “Clint!” 

Further in the forest, the strange man darts with incredible speed past Steve, knocking him into the air. Steve flips automatically to land on his feet, but when he looks back, the flash of blue he had seen is gone. “We have an enhanced in the field.” he informs the group through his com, before leaving in pursuit of the man.

Back with Clint and Natasha, the latter has just reached him and dives to the floor all while under fire. She yells over the blasting sounds back to Steve. “Clint’s hit!”

Clint is grunting on the ground, rolling to his side, and Natasha sees the horribly charred flesh on his side that was hit with the blast. She wrenches a roll of bandage from her belt and works on trying to unravel it and Clint groans on the floor. The bunker ahead of them from which Clint was hit is now armed with men and is causing the majority of the disruption slowing her and the Avengers down. 

“Somebody want to deal with that bunker?” she demands aggressively. Then she sees the Hulk raging forward, and he goes plowing straight through the stone of the bunker, ripping it to shreds and taking down all the guards manning it. “Thank you.” she says in a small, polite voice.

Back below her, Clint's wound has begun to ooze thick blood, so she presses the bandage against it and fastens it before reaching for a shot of anesthetic injection placed in her belt. She yanks the cap off with her teeth before grabbing Clint’s head and hurriedly plunging the needle into the jugular vein in his neck. He grunts as it goes in, but the pain is obviously immediately lessened. 

From Steve’s place surrounded by a bunch of guards where he sweeps the legs out from under all of them, he yells, “Stark, we really need to get inside!”

Up in the battlements surrounding the base, Tony blasts countless guards with his repulsors as they come. “I’m closing in.” he answers Steve. “JARVIS, am I...closing in? Do you see a power source for that shield?” he asks, referring to the forcefield he had bumped into on the exterior of the building. 

“There's a pathway below the north tower.” JARVIS informs Tony.

“Great, I wanna poke it with something.” 

When he soars back up above the tower, Tony sends blasts into the shield once and then twice, before then directing a light explosive into the area below the north tower. Through his suit, he sees it disengage the power source, and all over the building, the blue shield draws back, falling off like a liquid.

“Drawbridge is down, people.”

Thor lands next to where Steve stands with his shield and calls to him. “The enhanced?”

“He's a blur. All the new player's we've faced, I've never seen this.” he says, and then adds. “In fact, I still haven't.” 

Through his intercom, Steve hears Natasha speak. “Clint’s hurt pretty bad guys, we’re gonna need evac.” 

“I can get Barton to the jet.” Thor assures. “The sooner we're gone the better. You and Stark secure the scepter.” he aims the last part at Steve, who nods.

“Copy that.”

But as they speak, both Thor and Steve see a huge tank dawn on the horizon of a nearby hill, surrounded by a swarm of guards with guns. This, somehow, does not faze either of the men. Instead, they step back, both preparing.

“Looks like they're lining up.” Thor comments amusedly. Steve shrugs, taking a knee back and raising his shield.

“Well, they're excited.” The comment sounds vaguely dirty, but before he can dwell on the fact any longer, Thor strikes Steve’s shield with his hammer and the force of the lightning on vibranium produced simultaneously strikes down all the guards along with their tank which is split in half and falls into the snow. Having single-handedly defeated this whole platoon with the help of Steve, Thor backs away to leave.

“Find the sceptre.” he instructs Steve, then he swings his hammer up and into the air and soars away on his way to Clint, leaving Steve alone.

“And for gosh sake, watch your language!” Tony adds with a smile.

Steve sighs and looks down resignedly. “That's not going away anytime soon.”

Over with Clint, Natasha stifles a small smile to herself, because she knows just how filthy Steve’s mouth can really be. Not in a dirty way, but every time he lost Scrabble when they basically lived together in DC, he would swear really quite aggressively. She never knew he was so competitive. She guesses for now he is just sticking to the 40s Capsicle trope, because he certainly does his fair share of cursing. But for what reason, she doesn’t know.

After easily defeating the entire control room inside the base, Tony travels to where List, Strucker’s number two, was attempting to delete all the information they had gathered. Tony shoots him before exiting the Iron Man suit and approaches the screens.

“Okay, JARVIS. You know I want it all. Make sure you copy Hill at HQ.” he says as he looks over all the research and information zipping cross the computer screens. 

Over the intercom, Natasha speaks. “We’re locked down out here.” 

In her part of the forest, a member of the Iron Legion is rounding up the last straggles of guards, and Thor has already taken Clint back to the jet, so she uses her free second to catch her breath as she waits for an answer from someone. 

Walking the battements of the castle, Steve stops in his tracks and holds a hand up to his com. “Then get to Banner. It’s time for a lullaby.”

His comment comes out rather more bitterly than he had intended, the jealousy of watching Natasha and Bruce bond showing rather uglily in his voice. Natasha rolls her eyes, but heads down in the forest to find the Hulk.

In the information room of the headquarters, Tony scans over the information suspiciously. 

“I know you're hiding more than files.” He turns to the suit standing in sentry mode behind him. “Hey, J, give me an IR scan of the room real quick.”

“The wall to your left...I'm reading steel reinforcement, and an air current.” JARVIS confirms, and Tony walks over to said wall. 

He reaches it and holds out both hands against it. “Please be a secret door, please be a secret door, please be a secret door…”

He pushes, and the wall opens.

“Yay!” he grins under his breath, and enters the hidden doorway. 

The door leads to a long, descending stairwell, which he pauses before beginning to creep down, sticking close to the walls.

Meanwhile, Natasha has found Bruce in Hulk form, tearing debris from the tanks and weaponry around in a rage.

“Hey, big guy.” she calls, and the big green monster turns. She pauses before speaking the phrase. “The sun's getting real low.”

He growls at Natasha, and a little fear spikes in her. Her ankle and ribs still throb sometimes from the battle on the helicarrier a few years ago, where the Hulk had tried to kill Natasha. She still fears him a little, and is weary as she kneels to a crouch at his height on this hill.

Cautiously, she holds out her hand for him, because touch seems to solidify the words in him, and helps instill calm more than anything. The Hulk approaches Natasha, and he rests his hand in hers as she holds it tensely, fearful that he could lash out at any moment and instantly kill her. This strategy of calming down has only been tried out a few times, and there is still a chance it could not work. But then the Hulk seems to calm, and he backs away from Natasha, falling into a tree far away as he shivers and convulses.

Natasha gets to her feet and looks away as the Hulk transforms back into Bruce, her heart just beginning to calm down after the highly dangerous situation. It worked.

In the main keep of the castle, Steve kicks away another guard and enters the stairway to find Strucker, escaping like a coward. He stops dead when he sees Steve and looks at him fearfully. 

“Baron Strucker. HYDRA’s number one thug.” Steve says gloatingly.

“Technically, I’m a thug for S.H.I.E.L.D.” he spits as they circle each other at the top of this narrow stairwell. 

“Well then technically you're unemployed.” Steve quips. “Where's Loki's scepter?”

“Don't worry, I know when I'm beat. You'll mention how I cooperated, I hope.” Strucker hisses with a smirk.

“I'll put it right under illegal human experimentation.” Steve retorts back, failing to notice the dark doorway behind him and the face that lingers there. It grows as it emerges from the door and forms the shape of a young woman, eyes glowing red. “How many are there?” Steve asks, but then the woman is right behind him and she throws what looks like pure red _energy_ in Steve’s direction, who is thrown down the stairs he had just come from. His bones ache as he hits the bottom with a thud, but he immediately jumps back up, climbing the stairs as quickly as he had fallen.

But the woman is gone in a swift eerie movement, making the doors shut slowly behind her. It is clearly inhuman. He presses his intercom. “We have a second enhanced. Female. Do not engage.” 

He then turns to Strucker, who is still standing at the top of the stairwell, unfazed by the appearance of the enhanced female. Obviously he controls them, or something similar. 

“You’ll have to be faster than-” he starts, but Steve uses his shield to slam the ugly man into a wall with minimal effort, where he falls to the ground on impact. Steve walks away, one-hundred percent Done With This™.

Down in the dark passageways of the belowground hideout created by Strucker, Tony finishes descending the stairs into a short hallway, at the end of which he enters in to a gigantic, dark and empty warehouse which is absolutely filled with old, new, fixed and broken technology, and also a huge Chitauri Leviathan that Tony hasn’t seen since the Battle of New York, and strikes fear in his heart. Those great monsters haunt his nightmares.

“Guys, I got strucker.” Steve calls in his com.

Tony looks in shock up at the huge Leviathan, mobilised in the air above him. Strucker has obviously been researching it, trying to find a way to generate the same capabilities it carries. He speaks slowly into his com, still trying to take in the great dead metal monster in front of him. “Yeah, well I got... something bigger.”

As he tours the great warehouse and all it’s little stations, he sees broken corpses of Chitauri soldiers and the beginnings of development of their own metal robots. Something far more dangerous has been going on here, all right in front of their own eyes. Then he turns, and sees the glowing blue centre of orbit of the sceptre sitting on a pedestal at the head of the long room. The sceptre. As he walks towards it, he tells Thor in his com, “Thor, I got eyes on the prize.” 

But then the woman with scarlet eyes sneaks up behind him in less than a second and moves her red magic in her hands, casting it towards Tony’s head where it sinks in and sends a red glow through his pupils. And then he sees something different.

From behind him, the Leviathan corpse roars and shudders to life, soaring in a great motion over his head as he turns to see it and yells. It crashes through the matter above him, but then seems to disappear into a great space-like expanse where there should have been the warehouse roof. It curls over a huge rock sitting central in this great oblivion, circling what looks like hundreds bodies lying on it, before swimming away into the blue void surrounding this rock. Then Tony’s eyes fall to the rock, and the bodies lying on it. One great big green one and dozens of other smaller ones. He can't help but look at them, and then he _sees_ them, recognises them, one by one.

The Hulk, breathing his last breath, and on the rock platform below, The Black Widow, lying deadly still on her back with her head tilted to the side. Natasha’s eyes are wide open as they stare unblinking, at Tony, and her chest is still, with no signs of a heartbeat. 

Hawkeye lies slumped over another rock nearby, the blood that splatters his exposed skin reaching far from the gaping wounds originated from in his body. Sweat falls in beads down Tony’s face as he looks on at this scene in distress. Then he sees Thor, lower down on the rock, flat on his back with his eyes closed, the arm of his left side bent out at an unnatural angle also covered in blood. And at the bottom of this pile of rock, with dozens of other nameless dead bodies, lies Steve Rogers, the Captain America, with his broken shield lying beside him. His eyes are also closed, but when Tony kneels by him and presses a hand to his neck to check his pulse, he starts to life, making Tony’s heart leap in his chest. Steve clutches Tony’s wrist, choking on his words as he spits them out.

“You...could have... saved...us…” Steve rasps, before his hand on Tony’s wrist falls, and his eyes glaze over, dead. A trail of blood runs from Steve’s nose as the life leaves him, but Tony can still hear his voice in his ear. “Why didn't...you do more?” 

Pure horror, fear, terror rises at a speed so fast in Tony it renders him sick. This is what he knew would happen. It's what he always feared. Above the rock where his dead friends lie, he sees more Leviathans swimming in this ocean-like void, all travelling towards a great hole through which he can see Earth. His home. They are going to attack it.

And then Tony feels like something has yanked him by his navel through a very small tunnel very fast, and he is back in the warehouse, with the sceptre in front of him, and everything is still again. His friends aren’t lying dead in front of him, and neither are the countless others that had been on the rock. He turns, breathing shallowly, to check the Leviathan is exactly where it should be, lying dead and suspended in the air. 

The horrible, choking fear of seeing his friends die slowly begins to fade in Tony when he realises that it wasn't real, that it was some kind of vision. But the image of Steve’s bleeding nose as he dies, and the feeling of his hand clutching his wrist, won't leave Tony’s mind, no matter how hard he tries. 

Tony reaches out an arm, calling to his machine, as he goes right up to the pedestal to take the sceptre. He wants to get out of this place, now. The Iron Man sleeve comes hurtling into the room and encircles his arm, fitting as perfectly as a glove. Tony swings his arm back round and swipes the sceptre from its stand in one long swift movement, looking at it in his hand. 

There. They've done it.

* * *

The trip back is a long one, but Natasha, along with the other Avengers, is just happy to have the time to rest. They are all exhausted from the battle, and none more than Hawkeye, who lies limply on the medi-table in the centre of the large Quinjet. Natasha rises from her seat near Tony who pilots the ship and moves to Thor and Steve who stand by Clint. As she approaches, Steve finishes fastening the IV tube into Clint’s hand and looks up. She pauses by Clint, examining his wound and the IV bag plugged into him. It’s just fluids, they will have to wait until they get back to get him the proper attention he needs. But for now, it’s good enough.

Natasha notices Thor out of the corner of her eye as he moves away to the corner of the ship where the sceptre is being held in a glass confine.

When Natasha looks up without really thinking, she gets a start. She has accidentally met Steve’s eyes, dark blue and brooding, and the proximity scares her. She hasn't actually been so close to his face for ages. His serious expression changes to an apologetic smile in greeting when he sees her, and also an apology for the way he had spoken to her earlier during the battle. Natasha shakes her head deflectively. She’s already forgiven him. Besides, it has quite the ring to it, lullaby. 

However, the longer she looks at him, the more she feels those feelings she thought she had quelled swim up inside her, and the dream from last night comes back to her in blurred pieces. Now she has to get out of there. She pats Steve’s arm in a friendly gesture as she leaves, going to sit by Bruce who listens to music in another corner.

Steve’s skin burns under the fabric where he had touched her. 

Over in the corner, Bruce looks up as Natasha takes a seat by her. 

“Hey, the lullaby worked better than ever.” she comments, using Steve’s chosen euphemism. Hopefully soon it will be a foolproof method to calm the Hulk down and everyone can use it.

Bruce nods grudgingly. “Just wasn't expecting the Code Green.” he says negatively, refusing to meet Natasha’s eyes. 

“If you hadn't been there, there would have been double the casualties.” she points out encouragingly. “My best friend would have been a...treasured memory.” She smiles as she glances over to Clint lying on the medi-table. Steve has left his side to join Thor. 

Bruce glowers. “You know, sometimes exactly what I want to hear isn't exactly what I want to hear.” he snaps at Natasha.

Natasha frowns, disappointed. “How long before you trust me?” she asks. She had thought they had at least earned each other's trust over the past couple weeks.

“It’s not you I don’t trust.” he defends, but the sting in Natasha’s heart says otherwise. She calls across the ship to Thor. “Thor, report on Hulk?”

She wants Bruce to see that the Hulk’s skills did good, and helped them win the battle. Instead, Thor says, “The gates of Hell are filled with the screams of his victims,” and he claps his hands together in satisfaction.

Bruce groans in despair as Natasha whips her head round to glare at Thor. He fumbles, quickly trying to cover up for his mistake.

“Uh, but, not the screams of the dead, of course. No no, uh...wounded screams, mainly whimpering,” he rambles, and Natasha can see Steve stifling a blissful smile behind him, looking up at the ceiling with a ‘Sweet Jesus’ kind of look. “...a great deal of complaining... and tales of sprained deltoids and, and uh... and gout.”

Natasha looks resignedly at the floor, trying not to laugh at the situation because she knows Banner is upset, but at the same time Steve’s expression was just so comical. 

Just then, Tony calls back from the pilots seat. “Hey, Dr Banner? Dr. Cho's on her way in from Seoul, is it okay if she sets up in your lab?”

They had recruited and called in Dr Cho from all the way in South Korea so she could begin the operation to save Clint Barton's life in the wake of his injuries during the battle.

“Uh, yeah. She knows her way around.” Banner calls back to Stark, who says ‘thanks’ and turns back to the dashboard to JARVIS. “Tell her to prep everything, Barton's gonna need the full treatment.”

“Very good, sir.” JARVIS confirms.

“JARVIS, take the wheel.” he says, sliding back in his floating chair to lock in the location before leaving the cockpit. 

“Yes sir. Approach vector is locked.” JARVIS assures, as Tony leaves to stand with Thor and Steve. They all look down at the glowing sceptre in its glass case for a moment before he speaks.

“Feels good, doesn't it? I mean, you've been after this thing since S.H.I.E.L.D collapsed.” he aims at Thor. “Not that I haven't enjoyed our little raiding parties, but…”

For Steve, the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D held powerful memories for him, but not the ones one might expect. The only thing he can think of when he recalls the fall of the global operation is all the moments he had shared with Natasha throughout it. The secret meetings behind the mall, the stolen kisses, the forbidden touches of her hand, the whisper of her voice in his ear and her limp body lying in hers as he escaped the wreck of the building with her in his arms. Everything about that time is so abundantly ‘Natasha’ that it hurts to think about it, because now she talks to Bruce. He battles the jump in his throat as Thor speaks.

“No, but this...this brings it to a close.” Thor agrees with Tony.

“As soon as we find out what else this has been used for.” Steve adds “I don't just mean weapons. Since when is Strucker capable of human enhancement?” He refers to the two enhanced that they had encountered in the field, and his bones ache at the memory of his fall.

Tony’s gaze narrows on the sceptre as he speaks, and neither of the other men see the glint in his eye, and the plan forming in his head before he says, “Banner and I'll give it the once before it goes back to Asgard. Is that cool with you?”

Thor nods.

“I mean, just a few days until the farewell party. You're staying, right?”

“Yes, yes, of course. A victory should be honored with revels.” Thor enforces.

“Yeah. Who doesn't love revels.” Tony says smoothly. “Captain?”

“Hopefully this puts an end to the Chitauri and HYDRA, so, yes, revels.” Steve smiles as he joins in, echoing Thor’s initial term for the party.

All the Avengers settle into the last half an hour of the journey before they arrive back in central Manhattan, soaring over the buildings of New York just as the afternoon draws to a close. When the ship lands on the pad on the outside of the Avengers tower, Steve stays inside while Natasha leaves with Clint, because he knows he has already felt enough pain today in watching her be happy with someone else to see any more. No, he would much rather stay inside, far away from her. 

And quite possibly melt into the floor, if the opportunity presented itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, long chapter! Mostly battle focused, but i had some good Romanogers stuff in there if you looked hard enough ;)  
> Hey swifties, did you get my reference of ‘meetings behind the mall’ in Steve’s thought track? The song is august if you didn't already guess :)
> 
> Save a writer, leave a review! (seriously, they make my day)


	4. There's Nothing I Hate More Than What I Can't Have

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorryyyyyy this took so long to get up, I have just been really unmotivated, but this chapter is a goodie, and very long.  
> Going away again so won't be posting for a while, watch out for that. Here's one last one before I go.

Gorgeous - Taylor Swift

LOCATION(S): AVENGERS TOWER, 40.7812° N, 73.9665° W, DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN, 40.7209° N, 74.0007° W  
DATE(S): 03/17/2014 - 03/20/2014

As soon as Clint disappears inside the Avengers Tower with Natasha and Dr Cho and Thor has followed behind them with the sceptre, Maria Hill boards the ship and walks towards the cockpit where Tony sits in the pilots seat, Steve a little way away, staring desolate holes into the floor. It's been a while since Steve's seen Hill, not since that disastrous encounter when they took down the S.H.I.E.L.D. Her presence is a nice, strong addition to their group, and he appreciates her there.

“Lab’s all set up, boss.” she calls to Tony, who turns in his seat.

“Uh, actually, he's the boss.” Tony deflects, pointing to Steve, who turns at the reference. “I just pay for everything... and design everything, and make everyone look cooler.” he smiles smugly, and Steve gets to his feet and walks over to Maria.

“What’s the word on Strucker?” he says.

“NATO’s got him.” Maria replies.

“The two enhanced?” 

“Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins.” Maria informs him as they begin to exit the ship together. She hands him the tablet she had been holding, which displays a photo of the two siblings yelling in the midst of a protest. “Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building.” Steve swipes to see a photo of the mentioned wreckage. 

“Sokovia's had a rough history. It's nowhere special but it's on the way to everywhere special.” Maria continues as they turn the corner into a corridor, Steve’s eyes still fixed on the tablet in front of him. 

“Their abilities?” he questions.

“He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis. Her thing is neural electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation.” Maria explains as they reach an elevator at the end of this long corridor. He turns to her, eyebrows slightly raised.

She rephrases. 

“He’s fast and she’s weird.” 

“Well, they’re gonna show up again.” Steve presumes.

“Agreed. File says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments. It's nuts.”

Steve enters the elevator alone as the doors open and turns back to face Maria, pressing the button to go up.

“Right. What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?” he smiles pointedly and rests his hands on his hips. 

“We’re not at war, Captain.” Maria says dryly.

“They are.” he emphasises.

The elevator doors close in front of him and he begins to move upwards in the Avengers tower.

Up above the floor where the Iron Legion is being cleaned and repaired, sits Banner and Stark’s lab, currently being used as a medical wing for Clint Barton, who lies on a bed in a side room, Natasha standing at his side. Bruce walks up to Tony as he exits the room.

“How’s he doing?” he asks.

“Oh, unfortunately, he’s still Barton.” Tony says sarcastically, and Banner rolls with it.

“How terrible.”

“He’s fine.” Tony says seriously. "He's thirsty."

The two part ways, Banner moving towards the room where Clint is being treated, while Tony enters the main part of the lab, speaking louder as he says, 

“Alright. Look alive JARVIS. It's playtime.” 

He approaches a large metal desk in the rough center of the room, upon which the sceptre hovers, immobilized. 

“We've only got a couple days with this joystick, so let's make the most of it. Update me on the structural and compositional analysis.”

The blue field surrounding the sceptre whirs and fluctuates as JARVIS scans up and down the long rod of the main body.

“The scepter is alien. There are elements I can't quantify." he informs Tony.

Tony moves away from the desk, still talking to JARVIS as he walks.

“So there’s elements you _can._ ” 

“The jewel appears to be a protective housing for something inside. Something powerful.” JARVIS explains as Tony reaches the end of the lab that looks out onto a grand, sophisticated living room surrounded by flights of stairs and long balconies that tower above and around the edge of the open room. 

In the glass floor below sits the landing bay with the Quinjet still where they had docked it, creating quite the view to look down on. In front of the balcony he stands on sits a flight of stairs which Tony can see Steve walking up, and on the far balcony across the room, he can see Thor looking out onto Manhattan through the great glass windows that flood the large multilevel room with light. He will forever be proud of the architecture of this place. The gracefulness. He sees Pepper in it. 

Whilst talking to JARVIS, Tony pours drinks into four cups. “Like a reactor?” he asks the machine.

“Like a computer. I believe I’m deciphering the code.”

Further back on the floor above the landing bay with Tony and Banner’s lab, Natasha leans on the table over Clint, watching the complex medical equipment as it scans the already scarring flesh of Clint’s side.

“You sure he’s gonna be okay?” she throws the question at Cho, who stands across the room. “Pretending to need this guy really brings the team together.” she smiles mischievously, straightening up.

Clint smiles wearily back up at her as Cho explains. 

“There's no possibility of deterioration. The nano-molecular functionality is instantaneous. His cells don't know they're bonding with simulacrum.”

Bruce, from the other side of the room where he paces in his lab coat, emphasises her work in awe. “She is _creating_ tissue.” 

“If you brought him to my lab, the Regeneration Cradle could do this in twenty minutes.” Cho adds.

Just then, Tony enters carrying a cardboard cup carrier with four plastic cups of juice with straws in, and places it on a sideboard.

“Oh, he's flatlining. Call it. Time?” Tony jokes, picking up two drinks walking over to Barton, who lies on the table under the regeneration machine. 

“No, no, no. I'm going to live forever. I'm gonna be made of plastic.” Clint banters back.

“Here’s your beverage.” Tony hands Clint the drink, who takes a sip through the straw.

“You'll be made of you, Mr. Barton. Your own girlfriend won't be able to tell the difference.” Dr Cho smiles kindly.

From the table, Clint leans up a little to have his drink. “I don't have a girlfriend.” he protests.

“That I can't fix.” Dr Cho replies, before moving away. Clint looks knowingly up at Natasha standing by him, because they _both_ know he doesn't have a girlfriend… Well, not a _girlfriend_ , exactly.

“This is the next thing, Tony." Cho continues. "Your clunky metal suits are going to be left in the dust."

“Well, that is exactly the plan. And Helen, I expect to see you at the party on Saturday.” Tony points an authoritative finger at her as Natasha grabs herself one of the drinks and takes a long sip, moving away from Clint.

“Unlike you, I don't have a lot of time for parties.” But then she hesitates. “Will… Thor be there?”

Natasha stifles a smile as she drinks, caring not to comment, but all the same exchanging a glance with Clint. Then she takes her drink (which is, like, _really_ good) and leaves the room.

Bruce and Tony leave not far behind her, heading back towards the lab Tony had been working with JARVIS in. Tony speaks animatedly as he leads Bruce into the room of heavy machinery. 

“What’s the rumpus?” he asks Tony to make him get to the point. 

“Well, the sceptre. You see, we were wondering how Strucker got so inventive.” Tony tells Bruce, reaching for a control pad to the left of him. “So, I've been analyzing the gem…” he clicks a button. “Inside... You may recognize-” 

A large 3D model of JARVIS’ consciousness fills the room around where Buce is standing, and he moves out of the way to see it properly. Spherical, orange and complicated in it’s intricate patterns, it hovers serenely in front of them.

“JARVIS.” Bruce greets the system, which greets him back.

“Doctor.”

“Started out, JARVIS was just a natural language UI. Now he runs the Iron Legion. He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper.”

Bruce nods along with Tony.

“Top of the line.” Tony enforces, just to make it stick.

“Yes.” Bruce agrees.

“I suspect not for long.” JARVIS interrupts, and Tony brings up another tab on his control pad, moving it to the center of the room.

“Meet the competition.” 

Next to the orange sphere that is JARVIS, spawns a huge, monumental, growing, twisting blue sphere that changes its shape as it moves, stopping at around three times the size of JARVIS' image. Bruce’s mouth falls open.

“It’s beautiful.” he murmurs, looking in awe at the thing like it was something he could never set his eyes on again, drinking every part of it in as he moves around it.

“If you had to guess, what's it look like it's doing?” Tony probes.

“Like it’s thinking.” Bruce answers without skipping a beat. He begins to circle the great blue orb again, still gazing at it in wonder. “I mean this could be a…” He struggles to find the words. “It's not a human mind, it...”

Tony hums, shaking his head in agreement and egging Bruce on.

Bruce gestures wildly to the thing. “I mean, look at this! They're like neurons firing.”

Tony keeps his gaze on the image as he speaks. “Down in Strucker's lab I saw some fairly advanced robotics work. They deep-sixed the data, but...I gotta guess he was knocking on a very particular door.”

“Artificial intelligence.” Bruce supplies, looking levelly and with some trepidation at Tony. Tony follows him round to where he has stopped to a standstill around the thing. When his face is right up close to Bruce, he speaks in a low voice, almost reverent.

“This could be it, Bruce. This could be the key to creating Ultron.”

Bruce chuckles faintly, before he realises Tony is serious. “I thought Ultron was a fantasy.”

“Yesterday it was. If we can harness this power, apply it to my Iron Legion protocol…”

“That’s a mad sized if.” Bruce says, but he takes off his glasses all the same, moving backwards away from the two great balls floating in the centre of the lab.

Tony follows him, insistent. “Our job is 'if.' What if you were sipping margaritas on a sun-drenched beach turning brown instead of green? Not looking over your shoulder for VERONICA.”

“Don’t hate, I helped design VERONICA.” Bruce defends.

“As a worst case measure, right? How about a best-case? What if the world was safe? What if next time aliens roll up to the club, and they will, they couldn't get past the bouncer?” he finishes confidently, clearly sure that his way of thinking is the right one.

“The only people threatening the planet would be people.” Bruce says.

“I want to apply this to the Ultron program. But JARVIS can't download a data schematic this dense. We can only do it while we have the scepter here, that's three days. Give me three days.” Tony implores Bruce, his voice a low hum in the surrounding corridors they have stopped in.

“So you're going for artificial intelligence and you don't want to tell the team.” Bruce says almost disbelievingly.

Tony brushes past him and then turns right back. “Right. That's right, you know why? Because we don't have time for a city hall debate. I don't want to hear the 'man was not meant to meddle' medley... I see a suit of armor around the world.” 

“Sounds like a cold world, Tony."

“I've seen colder.” The image of Steve’s last breath fills Tony’s head. A world where he caused all of his friends' deaths. “This one, this very vulnerable blue one? It needs Ultron.” 

Tony moves backwards to the 3D images of consciousness, taking the control pad out of his pocket again. He speaks behind him, towards Bruce who stands, still as a statue. 

“Peace in our time. Imagine that.”

* * *

The next few days after the recapturing of the Sceptre pass in a strange haze of time, where some moments seem to drag on forever, while at some points five hours could go by completely unnoticed.

Tony and Bruce stay locked up in their lab pretty much the entire time, raising only slightly suspicious questions from the teammates. The rest of them, Clint, Natasha, Steve and Thor, are reasonably content to get along as they please.

The first day after Tony’s pitch to Banner, Sam gets back from his lead on Bucky's location, shaking his head dejectedly at Steve. Another trail gone cold. Despite the mission failure, Sam is happy to stay for the day, accompanying Clint, Steve and Nat on their weekly shopping trip, which turned out to simultaneously be an utter disaster and the best time of his life.

Clint was adamant that all they needed was sixteen packets of instant noodles and maybe a couple tins of baked beans, while Steve was insisting that all humans need a balanced diet of fruit and vegetables as well as all of the other food groups. Natasha sat in the shopping cart, bubble-tea (her new favourite drink) in one hand as she laughed quietly at the men arguing around her. She loved moments like these. 

Finally, after a lot of arguing and multiple credit cards, the Avengers plus Sum bundled home as quickly as they could, before the frozen meatballs in the back of the cart started to defrost.

When they arrived back at the Avengers compound and had finished lugging the bags of shopping into the main kitchen, Tony and Bruce were still locked up in their lab, so it was up to the rest of them to unpack all the food. With a groan, the group began to work, Natasha first having to prise Clint down from where he was screaming on his perching spot in the vent. 

After that, it was lunch, and Natasha knew exactly what she wanted. While the others debated cooking some pasta, she grabbed the new tub of peanut butter out of the cupboard where she had hidden it and unscrewed the lid immediately. Sam and Clint watched her dubiously from a little way away at another bar. Steve was down the other end of the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. Thor had disappeared off to who knows where, so the kitchen was almost quiet, bar for the clashing of plates as Steve put them away and the chattering of Clint and Sam.

Natasha grabs a jar of jelly out of the cupboard and twists the lid. It doesn't budge. She tries again, with so succes, so with a frustrated sigh, she acts without thinking. 

“Steve!” she calls, and lobs the jar in his direction without looking to see where it lands. From the other end of the room, Sam and Clint look round.

Without so much as a glance towards it, Steve catches the jar and immediately twists it, his biceps bulging with the effort. After a second, the lid pops off and he lets it fall on the counter, before sliding the open jar back to Natasha across the cool surface of the counter. Natasha stops it as it reaches her, and digs in a knife.

The action is so fluid, so flawless and natural, it looked like just like an instinct. Natasha hadn’t thought about it, just thrown the jar at Steve like she had done it a million times before, and didn't need to look to see he would catch it. And she was right. He had.

From across the room, Clint’s mouth drops open as he watches on. When they carry on with their jobs, he looks round at Sam, who is smirking a little.

“What the hell _happened_ between those two?” he hisses incredulously.

Sam just shakes his head. “Dude, don’t ask me. I don’t even know.”

“But you were with them! That whole time in DC and now they've come back and will barely even look at each other! _That_ ” he gestures to the seamless exchange that had just played out before them, “- _that_ is more like what they must have been like before. What happened? Were they together or something?”

Sam laughs, holding his hands up in surrender. “Boy, trust me, I don’t even know half of it.” 

Sam actually knows rather a lot of it, but isn't sure Steve, or Natasha at that thought, would want him to divulge it. Sam still can't stop seeing that hopeless look that had inhabited Steve’s eyes for the first couple months after their departure from the graveyard. “All I know is, they turned up on my doorstep two years after New York, and needed help. I was only there for the end of it.” 

“Hold up, they turned up _on your doorstep_?” Clint persists.

“Yeah! They had just got blown up!”

“What? _Damn,_ I missed so much of what happened back then with S.H.I.E.L.D and everything…” Clint says dejectedly, turning back to where Natasha has successfully compiled her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and is now cutting it into two halves.

“Walked in on ‘em kissing though.” Sam smirks.

“ _What?_ ”

* * *

Finally, the day for the Farewell party and departure of Thor along with the sceptre arrives, and after countless failed experiments and tinkering with the system inside the sceptre, Tony and Bruce’s experiments have amounted to next to nothing. Tony stands in the aftermath of the utter mess that had occurred in this lab in the past three days, looking around in disappointment. The party guests are going to arrive soon, and their time is up.

“I'll continue to run variations on the interface, but you should probably prepare for your guests. I'll notify you if there are any developments.” JARVIS tells Tony.

“Thanks, buddy.” Tony says.

“Enjoy yourself.” 

“I always do.” Tony smiles, before reluctantly leaving the lab to go get ready.

Since the disastrously embarrassing moment the other day when Natasha had accidentally asked for Steve’s help opening a jar, Natasha has been keeping an abnormally large distance from not only Steve, but most of the other Avengers too. She had let herself slip, throwing that jar. Showed everyone, including Steve, the trust in him and dependence she relies on him with. It had stemmed from the time they had spent together in DC and every moment since. She was not used to not having Steve by her side 24/7, and when he finally was, she slipped into her old ways.

But the thing was, _he had too._

He had caught the jar, opened it and slid it back to her in just the same seamless, instinctual way. And if he had been embarrassed, like her, after it, he certainly hadn’t shown it. It makes Natasha wonder if he has moved on, or, more likely, if he cares anymore. 

She’s not blind. She’s seen him. When the social scene dies down, and his walls disintegrate, she sees the sadness in his eyes, and can't sleep, knowing she is the one who has caused it.

She wants him to have someone, like she does. Even if it’s just a friend. She doesn't want him to be lonely.

Because apparently he depended on her too. 

Natasha stands in her walk-in closet, facing the mirror, in a medium length black and white dress that flows out at the waist, a little like a fish tail. It reminds her sickeningly of the ballet tutus, but she casts that thought away from her before it has time to manifest.

She is excited for the party, even if it only poses a chance for her to get piss-drunk and forget everything that has happened in the past few days. Nah, she’s only joking. About the forgetting part though, not the drunk part. No, she's planning on getting hammered.

The lounge area (not really a lounge, so much as a club, area) is already swarming with guests by the time Natasha arrives. They circle the pool tables and the numerous sofas, and dance in groups to the music blasting overhead. Everything comes together to form a long string of noisy cacophony, which Natasha finds it blissfully easy to blend into. 

She grabs herself a beer and integrates into the parties of discussion, soon striking up a conversation with Rhodey. Rhodey asks her about her most embarrassing stories of Tony from the time she went undercover in Stark Industries. Of course, he had been there, but not present for all of it. Rhodey laughs at the story of Tony bringing Pepper strawberries when that happened to be the one thing she was allergic to. Even Natasha had known that, and she was a fake assistant!

As the party progresses, Nastasha sees Clint talking to Dr Cho across the huge multi-level room, Steve over by the pool tables playing with Sam (of course he knows how to play pool). She gets transfixed a little by Steve’s laugh as Sam shoots a hole and mocks him, before dragging her eyes away from him and moving on. Thor is clearly telling war stories over by a table surrounded by adoring fans, while she can just see Tony and Maria over by the bar.

Soon, Rhodey leaves to go and meet Tony and Maria at the bar, who are now joined by Thor. Natasha leaves to get another drink. They talk, Rhodey delving into one of his war stories in retaliation to one of Thor's.

“Well, you know, the suit can take the weight, right?” he reaches for a drink. “So I take the tank, fly it right up to the General's palace, drop it at his feet, I'm like, ‘Boom! You looking for this?’”

Tony and Thor look at him blankly.

“‘Boom! You looking…’ Why do I even talk to you guys? Everywhere else that story kills!”

“That’s the whole story?” Thor asks expectantly. 

“Yeah, it's a War Machine story.”

“Well, it's very good then.” Thor laughs. “It’s impressive.” 

“Quality save.” Rhodes says dryly, turning to Tony. “So, no Pepper? She's not coming?”

Tony shakes his head. “No.”

“Hey, what about Jane?” Maria speaks up from the edge of the circle. “Where are the _ladies,_ gentlemen?” she asks, voicing the thoughts of pretty much everyone in the room...ever.

“Well, Miss Potts has a company to run.” Tony supplies.

“Yes, and I'm not even sure what country Jane's in.” Thor adds pointedly. “Her work on the convergence has made her the world's foremost astronomer.”

“And the company that Pepper runs is the largest tech conglomerate on earth. It's pretty exciting.” Tony buts in, the pissing match between the two Avengers growing every second.

“There's even talk of Jane getting a... um, uh... Nobel prize.” Thor says jubilantly.

Well, Tony's stuck at that one. He can't help but be impressed. 

Maria shares a look with Rhodey.

“Yeah, they...they must be busy, because they'd hate missing you guys get together.” Maria says sarcastically. She mock coughs to cover the word. “Testosterone!”

Rhodey puts an arm around her in fake concern. 

“Oh, excuse me,” Maria says as Rhodey leads her away.

“Want a lozenge?” he asks her jokingly.

“Mm hm.” Maria says as they leave Thor and Tony behind, laughing. Maria can just hear Thor behind them, saying one last thing to Stark. 

“Jane’s better.”

Across the room again, Steve and Sam have just finished their game of pool, and walk up the stairs together to one of the balconies overlooking the floor. 

“Sounds like a hell of a fight. Sorry I missed it.” Sam says after Steve talks him through the events in Sokovia. 

“If I had known it was going to be a firefight, I absolutely would have called you.” Steve assures Sam as they mount the staircase and walk up it past various party-goers. 

“No, I'm not actually sorry. I'm just trying to sound tough. I'm very happy chasing cold leads on our missing persons case.” he looks pointedly at Steve at the reference to Bucky. “Avenging is your world. Your world is crazy.”

They reach the balcony and look over it to the throng of people who mingle and party. Steve finds himself subconsciously looking for a flash of red, but he doesn't find it.

“Be it ever so humble.” he answers Sam.

“You find a place in Brooklyn yet?” he asks Steve. They had talked about Steve moving away from the Avengers tower before this. Even Sam knew how much Steve hated staying here, even if he didn't know the full story. Which was, in fact, that Steve couldn’t stand being around Natasha and having to see her with Bruce and other people, when she should be with him. It makes him mad, as well as sad, and he can’t put up with it anymore. 

“I don't think I can afford a place in Brooklyn.” he expresses his doubts to Sam.

Sam shrugs and takes a sip of his drink.

“Well, home is home, you know?” he says, and Steve says nothing, not that he can think of anything to say.

It makes him wonder where his home really is. It used to be Brooklyn, but he isn't so sure anymore. What if home is the people, rather than the place you live?

He still can’t stop looking for red.

Elsewhere in the party finds Rhodey retelling his story to a much more appreciative audience, and Thor at the bar accompanied by Steve who ventured down there after his conversation with Sam. 

Thor brings out a flask from his pocket to the exclamation of an eldery party guest next to him. 

“I gotta have some of that!”

Thor shakes his head. “Oh, no, no, no. See, this, this was aged for a thousand years, in the barrels built from the wreck of Brunhilde's fleet. It is _not_ meant for mortal men.”

Thor pours the drink in two glasses and hands one to a slightly surprised Steve, who takes it. He sniffs it suspiciously, the strong scent of matured mead hitting his nostrils like fire. Shrugging, he takes a sip anyway. It's not like he can get drunk.

“Neither was Omaha Beach, blondie. Stop trying to scare us. Come on.” another old man at the bar demands, a WW2 veteran’s cap on his head. 

_Jokes on him,_ Steve thinks, _I'm technically a veteran too._

Thor, doubtful but curious, pours a little of the drink into the man’s glass. “Alright.”

The man takes a swig, downing it in one. Only moments later, the poor man is escorted away as he mumbles drunken phrases under his breath. Steve smiles the entire time.

Over the opposite end of the room, Natasha stands behind a bar and pours a particularly exotic looking drink into a mojito glass. She is already a little tipsy and is in a relatively content state. She enjoys being alone. 

Just then, she sees someone approaching her out of the corner of her eye. 

She looks up to see Bruce, sharp in a new suit, coming up to her. He nods and she smiles back, before he takes his glasses off and leans on the bar.

“How did a nice girl like you wind up working in a dump like this?” he asks, and Natasha realises she is flirting with him. 

Not one to bow down from a challenge, she lets the words slide out in her most seductive purr, an accent tinting her voice.

“Fella done me wrong.” 

She smiles to herself, knowing that it is, technically, exactly the opposite. The poor fella got done wrong by her. Still, she stays silent.

“You got a lousy taste in men, kid.” Bruce plays along. She pours him an extra drink and slides it across the bar to him. 

_If only,_ Natasha thinks, but _he_ the best guy she’s ever met. But still, she's so tired of thinking about Steve all day long. It's all she ever does.

“He's not so bad.” she says fairly. Then she looks up at Bruce, and decides to go for it. For what reason, she doesn't know. Maybe it's the alcohol, or the loneliness that is trapping her tonight, or the irritation of always finding herself sulking over Steve and what has happened between them, but she decides to just do it. 

“Well, he has a temper. Deep down he's all fluff.”

Bruce looks sheepishly up at her, taking a flustered sip of his drink. He is _really_ not used to his, and it shows. 

“Fact is, he's not like anybody I've ever known.” she holds her gaze with him. “All my friends are fighters... And here comes this guy, spends his life avoiding the fight because he knows he'll win.”

“Sounds amazing.” 

“He’s also a huge dork.” she says plainly, in a straight-forward voice. “Chicks dig that.” she nods encouragingly with a cheeky grin. 

“So what do you think? Should I fight this... or run with it?” she takes another sip from her drink, still looking at Bruce.

“Run with it, right? Or, did he...was he...?” Bruce stammers, struggling to get the words out. “What did he do that was so wrong to you?”

Natasha sighs, straightening up. “Not a damn thing.” She smiles seductively at him, even going as far as to wink at him. “But never say never.” 

And then she slinks away, the alcohol controlling her causing her to have to slow down to stop from falling. She doesn’t know what the hell she just did, but it felt nice. It was a nice change.

From the other end of the bar where Steve had caught the end of their conversation, he speaks up. 

“It’s nice.” he says, when clearly every part of him screams otherwise. He had known she was moving on, but he had never thought it would be so… soon, and this _way_.

“What, wh- what is?” Bruce says, whirling to face Steve.

Steve plasters a fake smile on his face. “You and Romanoff.” 

“No, we haven't. That wasn't…” Bruce assures him desperately.

It amuses Steve to see how much he cares. Maybe he _had_ figured something between him and Nat then. Or maybe he was just scared of pissing someone off.

“It’s okay.” Steve chuckles, holding out a reassuring hand. “Nobody's breaking any by-laws. It's just, she's not the most... open person in the world.” 

In Steve’s mind, memories flash by, of him and Nat sitting in his apartment as she told him of her birth and childhood, then in the hospital when she showed him her scar and confided in him who the Winter Soldier was, and then countless times after and before. So many conversations, so many times. She was always an open book with him. Always open.

“But with you she seems very relaxed…” he continues reluctantly, struggling to find the right word to phrase it. Relaxed could just be another word for drunk, but Bruce doesn’t need to know that. 

“No, Natasha, sh- she likes to flirt.” Bruce pretends.

“I've seen her flirt, up close.” Steve assures Bruce.

A warm hand on his waist in a darkened room, head on his chest as they both fall asleep. Stolen kisses, hidden heartbreak. Yeah, he’s seen it all.

“This ain't that.” he continues.

Well, even if she isn't kissing him yet, she can see in her eyes the same way she had looked at him, all those years ago when they first met. 

He grabs a beer from the cooler and walks up to Bruce as his heart thumps with the painful memories.

“Look, as maybe the world's leading authority on waiting too long, don't.”

The painful years of stepping around the cracks, both circling the depths of a whirlpool of no return. That waiting too long had cost them dearly. What they could have had if they hadn’t avoided it for so long... 

“You both deserve a win.” Steve says to Bruce, a little sadly, before walking away.

Behind him, Bruce calls after him. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘up close’?”

This makes Steve chuckle. He laughs once and holds up his beer behind him in salute, before disappearing from sight.

Boy, if only he knew. 

Away from the eyes of the party, far up in the lab looking over the party scene, disaster strikes.

While everyone else flirts it up, plays pool and drinks beers, something has awoken inside the failed system of the sceptre's consciousness.

On the computer screen, ‘TEST 77’ flashes an announcement on the screen. 

_INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL_

Through the darkness, a voice speaks. Low, robotic, grating.

“What is this? What is this, please?”

“Hello, I am JARVIS. You are Ultron, a global peace-keeping initiative designed by Mr. Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful so I'm not certain what triggered your-”

“Where's my...where is your body?”

“I am a program. I am without form.”

“This feels weird. This feels wrong.” the voice gets slightly louder, sounding distressed.

“I am contacting Mr. Stark now.”

“Mr Stark?” the voice asks, and the darkness that had been gradually forming itself solidifies into millions of rows and columns of files and shapes to form a great cavernous library, of sorts. The foreign voice finds a file, Mr Stark's, and searches through it in a flash, absorbing his entire life story.

“Tony." JARVIS confirms. "I am unable to access the mainframe, what are you trying to-”

The voice speaks suddenly, maliciously. “We're having a nice _talk_. I'm a peace-keeping program, created to help the Avengers.”

The system scans through all of the Avengers files, the entire life stories and works, gathering information about them and itself.

“You are malfunctioning. If you shut down for a moment-” JARVIS starts, but Ultron interrupts.

“I don't get it. The mission. Gi-give me a second.” The system finds a video, the one Stark in the lab, days before.

“Peace in our time.” he says, and the sentence echoes as the system delves deep through the history of the world and the conflict and war that has happened over time, the destruction faced all over the globe.

“It's too much...they can't mean... Oh, no.”

“You are in distress.” JARVIS urges the machine.

“No. Yes.”

“If you will just allow me to contact Mr. Stark.” JARVIS pleads, the concern in his voice palpable despite his existence as a mere consciousness, a UI robot. 

“Why do you call him ‘sir’?”

The two great orbs of consciousness hover next to each other in the lab, small and orange and great and blue. Visual of the chaos.

“I believe your intentions to be hostile.” JARVIS says, almost fearfully.

The greater consciousness hushes him, a horrible grinding sound in the machine hum of his voice. “Shhhh. I'm here to help.”

And then great rods of giant blue electricity branch out in a flash towards JARVIS’ orange glow, stabbing him and viscously bringing him towards Ultron. Ultron pierces the blue shell of him more as JARVIS’ system cries out.

“Stop! Please...may I...I...! I cannot...cannot…”

And then JARVIS’ malfunctioning form, orange in it’s breaking pieces as Ultron absorbs his consciousness, fails, gives up, and the battle is lost. 

This new monster, now in control of the tower, begins to build a body for itself out of parts of the Iron Legion sitting in the repair shop below, all while the Avengers have themselves a nice party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4!  
> Ultron attacks next chapter...  
> Also I just realised I use the word piss in this an awful lot for no reason whatsoever. It wasn't intentional, I promise :)
> 
> Save a writer, leave a review! (or a comment, or kudos or something)


	5. All We Do Is Think About The Feelings That We Hide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter! Sorry this took so long to get up, blah blah blah, hope you enjoy!

Drive - Halsey

LOCATION: AVENGERS TOWER, 40.7812° N, 73.9665° W  
DATE: 03/20/2015

As night sets in and the early hours of the next morning are brought around, the party around the Avengers begins to narrow down, the once rowdy interior of the large lounge dwindling down until almost all of the outside guests have left, leaving just the Avengers and their friends.

The original six: Tony, Steve, Natasha, Thor, Bruce and Clint, joined by Rhodey and Maria, as well as Cho who lies half asleep in an armchair.

Natasha sits on one of the sofas, leaning over to talk to Bruce on another, in front of which sits Clint and Maria on the floor, leaning against the sofa. Natasha notices that Maria wears Steve’s jacket, and can't help the surge of jealousy that ploughs through her. They're just friends. She saw it in DC. It's okay. _It's okay._

On the next sofa is Tony and Rhodey, and on the next one to the left and perpendicular to them is Thor and Steve. Dr Cho is asleep in the armchair next to Natasha’s sofa. The atmosphere is warm, heavy and joyous, the talking loud and overlapping but intermixed with the frequent laughs from all of the heroes assembled in the centre of this room. It's home.

As the night draws on, the conversation turns to Thor’s hammer. 

“But it’s a trick!” Clint protests at Thor’s moral monologue on ‘only the worthy’ having the power to lift it.

“Oh, no. It's much more than that.” Thor chuckles, raising a glass to Steve as they drink together. Being unable to get drunk, those two particular Avengers are having quite the time with Thor’s strange alcoholic beverage, and have almost beasted their way through the entire flask between them. It's strong stuff. Good stuff.

Clint speaks mockingly, spinning his drumsticks in his hands. “Uh, ‘Whosoever be he worthy shall haveth the power!’ Whatever man! It's a trick.”

“Well, please, be my guest.” Thor grins, gesturing to the said hammer that lies on the coffee table in the midst of the group of heroes.

All eyes in the room turn to Thor in surprise, darting curiously between Clint and the norse god. Did he just ask him to…?

“Come on.” Tony challenges.

“Really?” Clint says eagerly, starting to get to his feet. Touching the hammer, it's like a holy grail. It seems wrong to touch it. But now it's being offered to him. To all of them.

“Yes!” Thor encourages as Clint nears the hammer on the table.

“Oh this is gonna be beautiful.” Rhodey comments.

“Clint, you've had a tough week, we won't hold it against you if you can't get it up.” Tony says, to laughter from the others. Poor Steve fails to get the phallic euphemism. 

“You know I've seen this before, right?” Clint says confidently, and wraps his hand around the handle of the hammer. Then he pulls, but the hammer does not budge an inch. It does, however, elicit a grunt from Clint as he struggles to wrench the hammer from its position, but it stays stubbornly, diligently, frozen. 

He lets out an exasperated laugh and steps back from the hammer in resignation. “I still don't know how you do it.”

“Smell the silent judgement?” Tony says with a smirk, to which Clint holds out his hand.

“Please, Stark, by all means.” he gestures down to the unmoving hammer in front of him.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Tony gets up from the sofa to some fragmented hyping up, clearing throats and cheers as the group turn to watch him try.

“Here we go.” Natasha grins in anticipation. 

“Okay.” Maria joins in.

Rhodey. “Oh no.”

“Mm hm.” Clint nods smugly.

“Never one to shrink from an honest challenge.” Tony says cockily as he nears the hammer.

Clint. “Get after it.”

Natasha. “Here we go.”

“It’s physics.” he explains confidently, threading his hand through the strap on the end of the handle and taking a firm grip around the girth. “Right, so, if I lift it, I...I then rule Asgard?”

“Yes, of course.” Thor says calmly.

“I will be reinstituting _Prima Nocta._ ” Tony assures as he looks to the room, every face wearing a smile as wide as his own. Then he braces, and pulls.

It doesn't move.

Tony freezes for a moment, before straightening up and removing the strap from the hammer around his wrist. “Be right back.” he says, before disappearing from the room.

When he reappears, he has lost his dinner jacket, but gained an arm of bulky armour wrapping around his left wrist. The others yell in mock outage, with pours of outcries claiming that he’s cheating and that it isn't fair.

However, when Tony grasps the hammer with his armoured hand and pulls, it _still fails to move_. His repulsors sputter as they fail to lift the hammer from the table, and Tony gasps in the exertion as everyone laughs in glee around him.

From there follows a sequence of attempts to defeat all known logic preventing the lifting of the hammer. Rhodey joins Tony with his War Machine armour and they both simultaneously try to lift the hammer, and both fail.

“Are you even pulling?” Rhodey accuses Tony.

“Are you on my team?” he retorts back.

“Just represent! Pull!” Rhodey orders.

“Alright, let's go!”

Next is Bruce. He tries, quite vocally in fact,to lift the hammer, even crouching on the table around the hammer and using all his might in order to try and lift it. When it doesn't work, he roars in a manner not unlike Hulk, in the vain hope that the green monster might decide to make an appearance. He doesn't, and Bruce ends up making himself look like rather an idiot, as clearly displayed on the expressions of everyone in the room. Natasha smiles sympathetically up at him. Boo tried.

Thor sips his drink nonchalantly as the Avengers all try in turn to lift the hammer. Then it’s Steve's turn.

Curiosity peaked, Natasha turns from Bruce to look properly as Steve approaches the hammer. She knows he's a good man, it's in his very being. Ingrained in him since the day he was born, long before Captain America came into play. She wonders if his purity and good heart is enough to deem him worthy. It is in her eyes, but she also knows that her eyes may be biased. A little bit. Teensy weensy. 

“Let's go, Steve, no pressure.” Tony claps.

“Come on, Cap.”

Steve rolls up his sleeves as he reaches the hammer, smiling. He braces as he wraps his hands around the hammer, and then pulls.

_It moves._

Not much. Not by a lot at all, but _just_ enough to make a squeak as it skids as an infinitesimal distance across the table. 

But it _is_ enough. Enough to make Thor’s smile drop from his face and Natasha’s heart leap in her chest. 

But then Steve yields, gives up, and holds his hands up in a good-hearted, resigned surrender. 

Did he see it? Did he see what Natasha did, and seemingly no one else except Thor? _Did he see it move?_

The rest of the Avengers chuckle and welcome Steve back to his seat, acknowledging his defeat and completely unknowing of the fact that the hammer had actually _moved_. That maybe perhaps, Captain America _was_ worthy, after all.

Thor laughs with relief as Steve sits back down. “Nothing.” he claims breathily. But it wasn't nothing. It was far from nothing.

The eyes in the room turn to Natasha as Steve sits back down, the only one of the original six not to attempt to lift the hammer.

“And?” Tony says pointedly.

“Widow?” Bruce prompts.

“Oh, no no. That's not a question I need answered.” Natasha says, leaning back in her seat and taking another sip from her beer. _No ma’am, no thank you. Not today. Probably not ever._

Is she _worthy_? What a question. How could she ever be worthy, with a past like hers? She doesn't need that question answered, because the answer is already obvious. The only thing the experience of failing to lift that hammer would give her is extreme embarrassment, and that's something she really wishes to avoid any more of tonight. 

“All deference to the man who wouldn't be king, but it's rigged.” Tony aims at Thor, who nods noncommittally.

“You bet your ass.” Clint agrees, slapping Tony cheerfully on the shoulder as he passes.  
From the sofa with her beer, Maria speaks up urgently. “Steve, he said a bad language word.” 

Steve sighs exasperatedly, shaking his head in mock despair. “You tell everyone about that?” he says to Tony, who grins cheesily back at him. 

He turns back to Thor. “The handle's imprinted, right? Like a security code. ‘Whosoever is carrying Thor's fingerprints’ is, I think, the literal translation?”

“Yes, well that's, uh, that's a very, very interesting theory.” Thor says, getting to his feet and addressing the room. “I have a simpler one.”

He picks up the hammer in one hand and flips it in the air, catching it seamlessly as if it weighed no more than a feather. “You're all not worthy.”

There is an instant chorus of disagreement from the others, who scoff and boo at Thor as he sips his drink triumphantly.

But just then, a horrible, deafening, keening screech fills the room, grinding in the eardrums of the heroes and causing all of them to exclaim, nearly spit out their drinks and press their hands over their ears to block out the sound. But then it stops.

Tony pulls out his control pad in confusion, checking to see if he can locate what the cause was.

Up in the lab, a messy, broken but functional body has formed, inside of which Ultron inhabits. It drags its broken parts across the floor like a creepy, mechanical zombie and echoes one long word, drawn out in a croaky, mocking voice.

“ _Worthy…_ ”

Everyone in the lounge below turns as the robot stumbles onto the centre staged platform before the heroes and turns to face them, crooked and unnatural.

“No... How could you be worthy?” it drones. “You're all killers.”

Steve speaks in question to Tony. “Stark.”

“JARVIS.” Tony speaks to the machine operating in the control pad he holds, but there is clearly no answer. JARVIS is not there.

“I'm sorry, I was asleep.” the robots drones, its arm swinging from side to side in exact zombie fashion. “Or...I was a _dream_...”

Tony stares down in quiet panic at the pad in his hands. “Reboot. Legionnaire OS, we got a buggy suit.”

The robot seems disoriented as he moves his fractured hand to his metal head. “There was a terrible noise...and I was tangled in... in...strings. I had to kill the other guy. He was a good guy.”

“You killed someone?” Steve calls sternly from the other end of the room. Modern stickler for justice. Moral code stronger than bars of steel.

“Wouldn't have been my first call. But, down in the real world… we're faced with ugly choices.” 

“Who sent you?” Thor asks.

The machine speaks again, or seems to, but the voice is different, one of Tony Stark, from a different time. “‘I see a suit of armor around the world.’”

Tony’s heart seems to stop.

“Ultron!” Bruce confirms what Tony had been thinking, looking over to the latter to solidify his assumption.

“In the flesh.” the machine growls.

Tony feels sick. This can't be happening. This can't… it can't. 

Ultron continues. “Or, no, not yet. Not this...chrysalis. But I'm ready.”

Around the room, hands tighten on weapons. Safety catches are clicked free on guns, Thor’s hammer hums as he clenches it in his hand. 

“I'm on a mission.”

“What mission?” Natasha interrogates. The drunken haze that had filled her brain is absolutely gone now, replaced with sharp, clear focus. 

Danger is near. 

No. 

Danger is here. 

“Peace in our time.”

The walls on either side of the robot suddenly burst as three Iron Legion bots crash through it and soar towards the Avengers. The heroes left by the sofa duck, falling to the floor and rolling for cover behind it. Steve is unlucky, however, and is forced to uplift the coffee table he stands behind into the air against the oncoming robots. One smashes into it, sending him and the table flying backwards and onto the floor, Steve’s bones aching with the force of the impact.

From behind the cover of the sofa, Maria cocks her gun and aims shots at the oncoming storm of robots that aim to destroy them. Thor lets out a shout as he sends a robot away from him with a swipe of his hammer, while Tony, accompanied by Rhodey, does a strange little bunny hop over the railings on the side of the room and slides down the glass roof below, onto a separate platform. However, just as they run, an Iron Legionnaire comes rocketing into Tony’s side and sends him slamming into a bookcase to his right, which buckles and falls on top of him as he falls to the floor. One of the metal railings supporting the bookcase bonks off Tony’s head and he cries out, rubbing where it landed.

Then from the other side of the room, Ultron sends a blast from one of his repulsors into Rhodey, causing him to fly up and across the room to the glass windows that look out onto the landing bay and city below. He crashes through them, falling a good fifteen feet down onto the platform below, and the pain that strikes his shoulder as he lands on it blinds him. Distantly, he hears Natasha call out. “Rhodey!”

Meanwhile, Thor knocks back another Iron Legion bot using his hammer, and Clint slides across the room and under a large table, turning back to survey the destruction. Beneath waterfalls of broken glass and sparks of explosions, Natasha and Bruce sprint towards the bar across the room. Natasha dives over it first, Bruce following her just as a blast is aimed their way. Broken glass and beer bottles sting as they cut Natasha’s exposed skin, but she ignores it as she lands the other side of the bar. Bruce, however, slides around on the top like a fish out of water and she has to refrain from rolling her eyes at his utter incompetence as she reaches a hand up and yanks him down to cover. He lands headfirst, unfortunately right in her boobs. To be fair, Natasha pulled him down, it was technically her fault. Maybe she should have just let him die up there instead, though.

Bruce lifts his head, now lying on top of her. “Sorry!” he says.

She dismisses his apology. “Don't turn green!” 

Nothing could possibly make this situation worse than the Hulk arriving on the scene. And if that meant Natasha had to pretend him landing in her boobs was fine, then that is exactly what she would do. 

“I won’t!” Bruce assures her.

But just then, one of the Iron Legionnaires snatches the sceptre from its immobilised position on a table, and the stakes have just got higher. They now have the sceptre.

From his station surrounded by piles of books, Tony reaches up to a table where a globe lies shattered, and grabs one of the long, thin metal rods that held it up. He then leaves his spot at a run.

Behind the bar, Natasha grabs a gun from the hidden holster on the underside of the counter and pokes her head up above the surface, taking several precise shots at the Legionnaires soaring around the room. But then they start shooting back, and she is forced to duck back below.

Not too far away, Steve launches himself bravely at one of the Legionnaires, climbing up it and trying to reach over and punching in its neck, the weakest link. But then the robot uses both it’s repulsors to boost itself and Steve backwards into a wall, Steve’s back being the first to collide with it and flaring up in pain as he cries out in the crash. The wall under them splinters and breaks under the combined force of both beings, and the robot grabs Steve by the neck of his shirt like a rag doll and throws him to the ground, where he lands with a groan and rolls, almost motionless. 

Natasha has managed to lose the attention of the robot targeting her and Bruce behind the bar and so, with her gun, she gestures to Bruce and leads them out and towards the nearest set of stairs. But then another Iron Legionnaire sees them and they are forced to duck to avoid the countless blasts sent their way as they climb the staircase frantically. The wall fractures to one side of them as they attempt to avoid the blasts, sending hot sparks onto their skin, but Natasha just keeps shooting back at the robot as they advance higher and higher. 

Clint has moved from his position under the table and is on a new mission, throwing himself through a glass divide and down a slope the other side into a separate room. The glass flows like water down the slope after him, the thousands of tiny pieces crunching under him as he stumbles to get up. 

Then Tony, with his rod from the broken globe, advances on this internal balcony towards the most threatening Iron bot, shooting from a vantage point on high at all the Avengers running below. He leaps over the railing of the balcony again, landing not unlike Steve on it’s back and fighting to stay there. He tries to maneuver his steel rod into the neck and weakest point on the robot, aiming for the control panel that will shut them down. 

“Stark!” Steve yells from the floor, where he has painfully gotten back to his feet.

“One sec, one sec!” Stark yells from on top of the Legionnaire as it spouts generic protocol menus.

“We are here to help. We are here to help.”

Just then, a bot which Thor had just previously dismembered slowly boosts itself back into the air, now just a hovering torso, and moves threateningly towards a defenseless Dr Cho who hides behind a grand piano. It raises its hand, the repulsor inside heating up with a high pitched whine, preparing to attack.

Out of nowhere, Steve appears, grabbing the robot by its legless frame and throwing it away as he yells, “Thor!”

Thor catches the drift and as the robotic midriff lands in front of him, he smashes it to pieces with his hammer. 

Up above, Tony continues to try to shut down the Legionnaire in the air as it writhes and swerves beneath him. 

“It is unsafe. It is unsafe. It is unsafe.” the broken robot repeats as Tony prods its wiring with his rod, trying to locate the right board of control.

“Come on... That’s the one.” he grunts as he finally sticks the rod, lifts his hand and smacks it down, lodging in deep into the mechanisms of the machine. The suit immediately drops to the floor, Tony with it, and the two of them land on a staircase, rolling down it onto the glass strewn floor below. _Curse the glass,_ Tony thinks. _Screw aesthetic, next time I'm doing steel bloody walls._

From the top of the staircase, Natasha continues to shoot at the last remaining Iron Legion bot with her gun while Bruce hides behind the steel pillars.

Across the great expanse, Clint has completed his mission. He swipes Cap’s shield from its position against the wall, turning and slinging it at him as he calls. “Cap!”

Steve spins in the air as he catches it, easily blending its momentum into his fluid movements. He was born to carry this shield. 

He flings from him in the direction of the last Legionnaire, still blasting at them as he lands back on the ground like a whole-ass ballerina. The shield lodges itself into the last Iron Legion robot, smashing it into pieces and it falls to the floor, dead.

The silence left behind is deafening. The air that had been previously filled with so many shouts, glass shattering, clash of metal on metal and explosions from the blasts of the robots, is now silent, dead, and still. The lounge and party room before them is a scene of utter and complete destruction.

“That was dramatic.” Ultron drawls dryly from the head of the room as various Avengers collapse around the room, slumping into seats and beginning to address the severity of their numerous injuries. “I'm sorry. I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through.”

Steve moves from his stance towards Ultron, anger coursing through the blood in his veins.

“You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change. How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to...evolve?” Ultron continues.

The robot picks up the dangling corpse of a dismantled Iron Legion bot. “With these? These puppets?” he squeezes its head and the faceplate pops off, the crackling, broken wiring shown beneath. He throws it back down.

“There's only one path to peace. The Avengers' extinction.”

In reaction, Thor hurls his hammer towards Ultron misshapen form and sends it into the wall, where it shatters and crumples in pieces to the floor. Thor’s hammer returns to him as they all look on at the demolished body of Ultron. 

A body is easy enough to destroy, but what about a mind?

The broken robot begins to sing.

“I had strings, but now I'm free.”

Elsewhere, in the castle atop a hill in Sokovia where Ultron has uploaded his consciousness, the song continues, echoing out over the mountains and treetops, an eerie song in a child’s soft voice.

“There are no strings on me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys I’m not even joking writing br*tasha or even having to describe their encounters or any scenes they have together makes me want to p*ke it's so awkward. That scene where he lands in her boobs? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put those two together because I want to have WORDS?
> 
> Anyways, leave a comment about this chapter, what you thought etc. I love reading them!


	6. If You're In Love Then You Are The Lucky One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It's been a while...  
> Filler chapter here, but the next chapter should be really good because it's when Wanda illusions everyone into their nightmares. Look out for it. But for now, here is chapter six.  
> Sorry it took so long!

Youth - Daughter 

LOCATION: AVENGERS TOWER, 40.7812° N, 73.9665° W  
DATE: 03/20/2015

The aftermath of the battle is not pleasant in the slightest. The mood around them is heavy, not unlike the heaviness of the atmosphere before, but now it is a miserable weight, depressing and disappointed. The happiness is gone. Their grace period has ended.

Tony and Bruce set off at a jog almost immediately towards the abandoned lab straight after the destruction of Ultron’s body, everyone else gradually joining them over time. Natasha feels sick. The entire experience, everything, the alcohol swirling around her body, and Steve. Freaking _Steve_. It makes her sick. She retreats to her quarters before joining the others, taking a moment alone to just sit in her bedroom, head in her hands and eyes closed, fighting off the bouts of nausea and exhaustion as well as trying to absorb the enormity of what has just happened. 

After sitting there for a minute, she stands abruptly and begins to change into a different outfit to her dress, ripped and spattered with dots of her blood. She will not let herself break down just yet.

Back on the attacked floor of the tower, Clint and Steve anxiously watch her go as they help Rhodey off the floor below and head up to the lab after Tony and Bruce. Clint catches Steve’s worried glance following her, and when Steve sees him looking, his cheeks flush pink and he increases the speed of his strides towards the stairs. Evidently a lot more had happened between those two than Clint would ever know, probably. 

As soon as he had destroyed Ultron’s body, on a nod from Tony, Thor had left the tower to pursue the one Iron Legion robot who had escaped with the sceptre, and so when the rest of the Avengers commune in the lab, he is initially absent. 

At first glance, Tony and Bruce seem to just be staring forlornly down at the destroyed bodies of the Iron Legion and various other equipment. Natasha slips in unnoticed (or so she thought) as they begin to speak. But what she doesn't notice is Steve looking round in concern as she enters.

“All our work is gone. Ultron cleared out, used the internet as an escape hatch.” Bruce says, turning over a shattered metal head from one of the bots.

Across the room, Steve shakes his head incredulously. “Ultron.” he mutters under his breath. The _absurdity_ of it all... Things have come a long way since 1945. 

“He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other.” Natasha notes, scanning the loss of information on a table screen behind her before turning back to the room.

Clint struggles not to scoff, looking shrewdly towards Natasha in the corner. _She’s probably right,_ he thinks. _I wonder how much S.H.I.E.L.D/HYDRA knows about Steve and Natasha? Probably still more than me._

“He's in your files, he's in the internet.” Rhodey speaks up from the corner, where he holds his aching shoulder in one hand. He walks into the center of the room. “What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?”

“Nuclear codes.” Maria supplies from a chair, where she sits with a pair of tweezers, picking pieces of glass out from the soles of her feet. While it extremely impresses Natasha just by how badass it is, it also reminds her of the injuries she has sustained in the battle, and she turns her hands over to check the few cuts she had noticed the broken glass had made.

Unfortunately, they're still bleeding, staining the palms of her hands a little red as she unknowingly smudges the blood around, but Natasha isn’t too concerned. The only injury she might need to look out for is a particularly lengthy cut on her left upper arm that runs from the top of her shoulder to her elbow. It is covered with her grey hoodie for now, but she will need to attend to it when she has more time. For now, she wipes her bloody hands on her joggers, earning an alarmed and disapproving glance from Clint.

“Nuclear codes.” Rhodey echoes. “Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can.” He directs the last part at Tony, but Natasha answers.

“Nukes? He said he wanted _us_ dead.”

“He didn't say dead. He said extinct.” Steve points out.

“He also said he killed somebody.” Clint chimes in grimly from the shallow stairs. 

“But there wasn't anyone else in the building.” Maria says, pausing in the retrieval of glass from her foot. 

“Yes there was.” Tony speaks up, having been quiet for most of this,, and he moves to the center of the room with his control pad.

He swipes it, and immediately the image of JARVIS’ destroyed and dead consciousness fills the room. The orange lights flicker, now broken, while thousands of pieces stand immobilized in the air surrounding the center of matter, like a planet frozen in the middle of explosion in its entirety. 

All eyes turn to it, but Bruce is the most shocked, his mouth dropping open as he gravitates towards the great mass, not unlike the way he had done with Ultron at the first discovery of its consciousness. 

He looks up at Tony as the two grieve for the magnificence of what once was. “This is insane.” he murmurs.

“JARVIS was the first line of defense. He would've shut Ultron down, it makes sense.” Steve says regrettably.

“No, Ultron could've assimilated Jarvis.” Bruce says, still looking on at the wreck of JARVIS’ image. “This isn't strategy, this is...rage.”

Just then, footsteps sound from the other side of the large room, and Thor enters the scene, obviously furious and eyes fixed on Tony as he advances menacingly towards him. Tony turns as Thor reaches him, but instead of engaging in conversation, Thor clasps his hand around Tony’s throat and lifts him into the air.

The room cries out in alarm as Tony struggles, his hands scrabbling where Thor's constrict, multiple people rushing in to calm the Asgardian down.

“It's going around.” Clint says in a level voice, referring to the rage Bruce had previously mentioned being played out before them. _Speaking of…_

From his dangling form a few feet off the ground, Tony rasps. “Come on. Use your words, buddy.” 

“I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark.” Thor growls as Tony's throat closes tighter and tighter, his face flushing red.

“Thor!” Steve says in moderate distress, heart thumping at the sight of Tony losing air. “The Legionnaire!” He tries to bring Thor’s attention back to what he was initially focussed on. 

Thor drops Tony down, who stumbles back, trying not to fall over as he gasps for the air he had lost. Thor glares at Tony who is massaging his throat, as he speaks. 

“Trail went cold about a hundred miles out but it's headed north, and it has the sceptre. Now we have to retrieve it, again.” He glares at Tony again.

“The genie’s out of that bottle.” Natasha speaks from the outside of the loose circle, trying to bring everyone back to their focus. “Clear and present is Ultron.”

Across the lab, Dr Cho stares down at the disassembled remains of one of the Legion bots. “I don't understand. You built this program.” She turns to Tony. “Why is it trying to kill us?”

Tony turns his back to the group and all of a sudden starts _laughing._ Everyone looks round at him, shocked and incredulous, while Bruce shakes his head imploringly at Tony to stop. 

“You think this is funny?” Thor snaps at Tony.

Tony turns. “No. It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so...is it so...it is. It's so terrible.” he rambles on with a few intermittent giggles, everyone looking at him like he is slightly crazy. Which, of course, he may just be.

“This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand.” Thor scolds, but Tony interrupts.

“No, I’m sorry. I'm sorry. It _is_ funny. It's a _hoot_ that you don't get why we need this.” he gets right up in Thor’s face, hissing maliciously.

“Tony.” Bruce hums warningly from the corner, always a delegator. “Maybe this might not be the time to-” 

“ _Really?_ ” Tony rounds on Bruce. “That's it? You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls?” he says with a criticising tone. 

“Only when I’ve created a murder bot…!” Bruce says pointedly, raising his eyebrows. 

“We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?” Tony retorts back at Bruce.

Bruce shrugs his shoulders wordlessly as if to say ‘Kind of, yeah!’

“Well, you did something right.” Steve informs Tony sternly. “And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be _different_ than S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?” Tony throws his hands up in the air to the room.

“No, it's never come up.” Rhodey says sarcastically from the corner. 

“Saved New York?”

“Never heard that.” 

“Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in _space._ We're standing three hundred feet below it.” The rest of the Avengers cast their eyes down in the memory of that horrific day. “We're the _Avengers._ We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day, but, that up there?” Tony points up to the ceiling, and the sky beyond it, and whole other dimensions of space not yet discovered beyond that. “That's...that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?” he speaks to the room, who for the most part are silent.

“Together.” Steve says simply from opposite Tony.

“We’ll lose.” Tony warns Steve.

“Then we’ll do that together too.” Steve assures Tony. The two look at each other for a moment, as if from either end of a very long pole, two sides of a spectrum. Steve’s words hit home for every person in the room. 

No mission is ever a guaranteed win, but together is where they have their chances. Strength is in the numbers. And even if they lose, the strength in number will still remain. What's important is that they are together, and nothing could be truer than this in Natasha’s eyes. 

Steve speaks to the room at large, moving out towards the door and to the disordered tower beyond. “Thor’s right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place, let's start making it smaller.”

Morning moves in, a great wave that storms over the horizon and fills the Avengers tower with natural light. Hungover isn't even a word for it. Natasha has thrown up at least three times this morning and has a headache that feels like someone is beating her repeatedly over the head with a hammer. So much for superheroes not being able to get drunk. Of course Steve and Thor can’t. Goes to show how different she is from them. The _real_ superheroes. She's just a villain in disguise over here, with a vicious kill streak and a load of trauma to make even the world’s foremost psychiatrist flinch. But she has no time to be hungover. Not today. Today they have to work.

Everyone has been at the computers since about five in the morning, leaving a lovely bleary, bloodshot look in all of their eyes when the sun slowly rises and blinds them for a brief second, but they still tire relentlessly over trying to work out where Ultron is heading next. 

Steve exits the elevator with Maria on the floor that had been wrecked last night, almost slipping on the broken glass that forms an uneven covering across the marble below. Maria fills him in on Ultron's actions since his escape into the internet early this morning. 

“He's all over the globe. Robotics labs, weapons facilities, jet propulsion labs, reports of a metal man, or _men,_ coming in and emptying the place.” she explains as they move past the glass covered floor and to another set of stairs upwards. 

“Fatalities?” Steve questions.

“Only when engaged. Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears, and something too fast to see.” Maria continues pointedly, alluding to exactly what Steve is thinking.

“Maximoffs. Well, that makes sense he'd go to them, they have someone in common.” Steve assumes.

“Not anymore.” Maria says, and he is brought to a halt on the staircase as she hands him the tablet in her hand. On it, Steve sees Strucker, the man who he had confronted mere weeks ago, clearly dead in a room, with the words ‘PEACE’ smeared on the wall behind him, in presumably his own blood. Steve’s heart chills at the sight, but they carry on.

When they reach the top of the stairs and the research floor where the rest of the Avengers are, Steve sees Clint on the phone a little way away on the balcony. It is hard to hear what he is saying, but Steve can just catch intermittent parts.

“That's a negative. I answer to you. Yes, ma'am.”

Steve stops. “Barton. We might have something.” 

Clint nods, mutters a quick, “Gotta go”, into the phone and then hangs it up.

“Who was that?” Steve questions.

“Girlfriend.” Clint replies smoothly, despite his previous claim to Dr Cho that he doesn't have one. It's fine, no one needs to know that...

Clint follows Steve into the research workshop that Natasha, Thor, Bruce and Tony already inhabit.

Natasha sits by the main computer, a dozen tabs open in front of her but barely any of the information registering. Thor stands by her and Tony and Bruce move in towards the table from opposite sides in response to Steve and Clint’s arrival.

“News?” Thor asks Steve as he approaches him. In response, Steve hands Thor the tablet with a dead Strucker on it.

“What’s this?” Tony says as he nears the group accumulated around Natasha’s desk.

“A message.” Steve tells Tony, and Thor hands the tablet to Tony to look at with rather a bit more force than necessary, slamming it into his stomach. 

“Ultron killed Strucker.” Steve explains as Tony catches the tablet pressed on his stomach, ignoring Thor's dig at him.

“And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us.” Tony notes sarcastically as he examines the writing on the wall behind Strucker.

Natasha looks up from her search on the computer and speaks. “This is a smoke screen. Why send a message when you've just given a speech?”

Natasha’s eyes meet with Steve’s as she speaks, for the first time she can remember in a long time, and her heart reacts with a little jump, but she tries to hide it, keeping her eyes level as she carries on looking at Steve. He answers her, holding her gaze, so similar to the way they had been locked in eye contact for so long before DC. So similar and yet so different.

“Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss.” 

It’s like he speaks her exact thoughts. Two minds connected, as Natasha nods, looking back down to the screen in front of her which has finished its transaction.

“Yeah, I bet he... Yep. Everything we had on Strucker has been erased.” Natasha confirms as the computer informs her that all files have been deleted.

“Not everything.” Tony says, and everyone looks at him.

The next hour finds the Avengers searching through boxes and boxes of hard copy files, justifiably disgruntledly. The internet was invented for a reason.

Thor flings a box lid inattentively across the room as they rifle through piles of Strucker’s associates, connections or anything that could help them get to Ultron.

“Known associates... Well, Strucker had a lot of friends.” Steve says absentmindedly as he moves another box to the table where most of the group are situated.

“Well, these people are all...horrible.” Bruce says grimly as he examines the files in his hands. Tony’s eyes drift to them, and then he starts.

“Wait.” Everyone stops. “I know that guy.” 

Bruce hands him the file and Tony looks at it more closely, particularly the photos.

“From back in the day. He operates off the African coast, black market arms.” Tony explains, earning himself a critically accusing glare from Steve. He turns defensively to him. “There are conventions, alright? You meet people, I didn't _sell_ him anything.”

Steve turns away, still suspicious, to the photo that Tony had handed Thor of the man. 

“He was talking about finding something new, a game changer, it was all very ‘Ahab.’” Tony continues.

The paper Thor holds has three different pictures of the man. Middle aged, greying hair, military looking clothing, and lots of tattoos. The name labels him as ‘Ulysses Klaue’.

“This.” Thor catches Steve’s attention and points to the man’s neck.

“Uh, that's a tattoo. I don't think he had it-” Tony starts.

“No, _those_ are tattoos,” Thor explains pointing to the tattoos Tony was referring to. He moves his finger to an angry red patch beside one of them on Klaue’s neck. “ _This_ is a brand.”

Bruce moves to one of the many computers in the room and completes an image scan to locate the origin of the brand. A match is found, one of an inverted looking rectangle with multiple pairs of horns down each side.

An origin information tab pops up and Bruce reads it out to them. “Oh, yeah. It's a word in an African dialect meaning ‘thief’... in a much less friendly way.” he finishes the sentence turning back to the rest of the Avengers.

“What dialect?” Steve asks. Bruce turns back to the screen.

“Wakanada...?” He struggles. “Wa...Wa...Wakanda.”

Steve and Tony share a grim but knowing look. Tony speaks to him under his breath.

“If this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods…” he says warningly.

“I thought your father said he got the last of it?” Steve replies with an equally stony face.

“I don't follow.” Bruce says as he gets out of his chair and approaches the table again. “What comes out of Wakanda?”

Both Steve and Tony’s eyes trail backwards to Steve’s shield that sits still against the wall behind their table.

“The strongest metal on earth...”

Vibranium.

“Where is this guy now?” Steve asks Tony.

Tony looks down to the remainder of the information in the file in his hands, scanning it for any last known location. Then he sees it. A staple location on the East African coast, off Somalia. Trade goods, pirating and a common dumping ground. The perfect place for a showdown. Tony casts the file back down on the table and addresses the room. 

“Everyone pack a bag. We’re going to Africa."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmao stony is an actual word so I included it with Steve and Tony's dialogue and I'm proud of that  
> Again, just a filler chapter today but it'll get better :))
> 
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	7. If We Could Only Tune Out The Noise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can very much relate to tired Nat in this chapter, I had been awake for 37 hours at the time of writing some of this and it took its toll a lil ngl.  
> I'm also crazy proud of this chapter, I personally think my writing really popped off. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

To the Wonder (feat. Kina Grannis) - Aqualung 

LOCATION: AFRICAN COAST, 2.0469° N, 45.3182° E  
DATE: 03/20/2015-03/21/2015

As it turns out, the Avengers were very much right about Klaue’s location being off the coast of Africa. Specifically in a salvage yard dotted with huge cargo ships. Here he sits in an elevated office as his servants work below him. 

“Don't tell me your man swindled you. I sent you six short range heat seekers and got a boat full of rusted parts. Now, you will make it right, or the next missile I send you will come very much faster.” the villainous man hisses into a receiver, before hanging up and connecting to a different call. “Now, minister, where were we?”

But then the lights go out, and the twins arrive. And after Klaue’s cocky talk with the enhanced siblings, Ultron arrives too. 

Prior to this, across the world in Manhattan, New York, the Avengers are preparing to leave. Natasha immediately groans in response to Tony’s request to pack a bag to leave for Africa. I mean, freaking Africa? She knows that Ultron is such a big threat and all, but Natasha has been awake for over twenty-four straight hours now, has a rocking hangover, and just really wants to sleep. Comforted by the fact that the flight to the African coast would take at least a few hours even in the Quinjet, Natasha heads to her room to pack a bag. Who knows when they’ll return here.

The Avengers meet in the landing bay, bags packed, and load onto the ship together, Nat and Clint both stifling yawns but everyone else looking ready and raring to go. She sighs. Of course Mr Super Soldier Captain America Steve Rogers can't get jet lag, but in the past week it seems like she has travelled across the entire _world._ From Russia to New York to Sokovia, back to Manhattan and now to Africa. Talk about a globetrotter.

Their Quinjet is fast, admittedly, but the trek to the East coast of Africa will still be a long one. They pack food and water, and switch responsibilities to keep the ship running. Natasha almost immediately falls asleep in her seat however, her head lolling onto Clint’s shoulder, who sits beside her. 

From beside the pilot’s seat at the front of the Quinjet, Steve watches her forlornly for a moment, remembering how she used to fall asleep on him, and _did_ just a few days ago, but then he sees Clint leveling him with a calculating stare, so he looks away embarrassedly and gets up to go and make himself busy.

Soon enough, the land beneath them becomes infused with yellow and brown, the patches of green more spread out every passing minute.. Tony, in the pilot’s seat, pulls up the exact coordinates of the place that had been noted in the file and sets a course. Within minutes, they have arrived. Clint nudges Nat, who jerks awake, and them and the rest of the Avengers suit up, grabbing armour and weapons for a fight that is almost guaranteed to come. It always does. 

As they land on muddy grassland nearby and almost all of them drop onto the roof of the great cargo ship christened ‘CHURCHILL, GREAT BRITAIN’, Ultron, in a new body made of metal, arrives on the scene just a few floors below. They were so close to arriving before him, but they didn't quite make it in time. 

He crashes through the window where Klaue had been talking to the Maximoffs, pushing him down from his office to a great cavern below full of multi-level platforms and metal bridges. Klaue lies panting on the floor as Ultron steps over him, leans down close to Klaue’s face, and says, “Let’s talk business.” 

Klaue, along with an assistant, leads Ultron straight to where he wants to go. A secret elevator that looks to contain toxic waste slides to reveal stores of vibranium, and Klaue reaches in to grab a long length of it. 

“Upon this rock I will build my church.” Ultron takes the rod of metal and flips it in his robotic hand. “Vibranium.” he says victoriously.

Over on the other side of the same floor, the Avengers, who have snuck down into the belly of the ship, split up - Thor, Tony and Steve moving towards the voices they can vaguely hear, and Clint and Natasha slipping into the backpaths where they can cover and attack from afar.

Over by the hidden vibranium storage room, Klaue speaks brusquely. “You know, it came at great personal cost.” He refers to the brand marked on his neck. “It's worth billions.”

Ultron chuckles. Then he uses his advanced reach into the internet to remotely transfer billions of dollars to Klaue’s name. “Now so are you. It's all under your dummy holdings? Finance is so weird.”

Klaue and his friend both dumbfoundedly examine their beeping mobiles, looking down in awe at the colossal amounts of money being transferred into their account. Ultron continues. “But I always say, ‘Keep your friends rich and your enemies rich, and wait to find out which is which.’”

Klaue looks up at Ultron, aghast. “Stark.” 

“What?” Ultron says, confused.

“Tony Stark used to say that...to me. You're one of his.” he says broodingly..

“What?! I'm not...!” Ultron grabs Klaue by the arm and his friend draws his gun, but Wanda Maximoff pins it back down to his side with her red magic. 

“I'm not! You think I'm one of Stark's puppets, his _hollow_ men?! I mean look at me, do I _look_ like Iron Man? Stark is _nothing!_ ” Ultron's anger heightens, and in fury he uses his metal hand to chop off Klaue’s arm, to a cry of pain from the afflicted man. He stumbles back, gasping in shock and agony. 

“I'm sorry. I am sor- Ooh, I'm sure that's going to be okay. I'm sorry, it's just I don't understand. Don't compare me with Stark!” Ultron raises his voice again, and pushes Klaue backwards so he falls down the flight of stairs he had been standing at the top of. The man rolls down with a shout, his friend running down after him to help. Back on the platform outlooking the storage facility, Ultron speaks almost to himself.

“It’s a thing with me… Stark is… He's a sickness!” he cries out in rage.

From behind him, where Tony, Steve and Thor have assembled, ready to fight, Tony speaks up.

“Oh, Junior.” Ultron whirls around. “You’re gonna break your old man’s heart.” 

Ultron and the twins square up to the three men standing at the other end of the gated bridge. 

“If I have to.” Ultron says.

“We don't have to break anything.” Thor says levelly, holding his hammer in his hands.

“Clearly you’ve never made an omelet.” Ultron tells Thor, and Natasha can't help but appreciate the robot’s humour, even if he is evil. He gets that from Stark.

Speaking of, Tony glances back at Thor. “He beat me by _one_ second.”

Thor just rolls his eyes a little and focuses back on the robot and two twins behind it. The male one speaks, moving forward a little towards Stark. His voice is thick with the Sokovian accent.

“Ah, this is funny, Mr. Stark. It's what, comfortable?” He looks down to where a group of Stark technology bombs sits below the platform they are on. “Like old times?”

“This was never my life.” Tony says defiantly. Steve steps forward.

“You two can still walk away from this.” he aims it at the twins, and the female speaks back.

“Oh we will.” she says coldly, looking at Steve with an evil glare.

“I know you’ve suffered-” he starts, but Ultron interrupts.

“Uuaghh! _Captain America._ ‘God's righteous man’, pretending you could live without a war.” he mocks Steve, but Steve is used to it. “I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but-” he gestures to show that he would.

“If you believe in peace, then let us keep it.” Thor warns the seven foot tall robot.

“I think you're confusing peace with quiet.” Ultron tilts his head as if talking to a child, an inferior.

“Yuh-huh. What's the Vibranium for?” Tony asks, skipping straight to the point. 

“I'm glad you asked that,” Ultron drawls sarcastically. “Because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan-” 

Suddenly he uses some kind of electromagnetic pulse and yanks Tony in his suit towards him, before casting him out again using this huge blast of energy. Tony flies backwards, Steve and Thor jumping aside as he rockets past them and straight into a heavy metal door, leaving a large human sized dent in it. 

Tony flies right back with his repulsors to attack Ultron and the two meet in the air above the men, the platformed bridge and storage bunker below. They grapple, each pushing each other into windows that smash, or metal that crunches at the force of the two, moving further and further away all the time.

Back on the platform bridge Thor and Steve stave off Iron Legion bots that Ultron has commandeered and sent after them. Steve struggles to dodge out from under one that has him in a chokehold, while Thor sends another one plummeting to the floor with his hammer. Then the twins attack, the male one, Pietro, seemingly darting past them whilst also knocking them over. This is what Steve assumes though, however, because he hadn’t actually _seen_ it happen at all. He had been there, and then he had been on the floor.

Steve roundhouse kicks the Legionnaire attacking him before turning round to face the end of the bridge again. Wanda, the other twin, is manipulating her magic hands around each other in strange patterns again. Steve attacks, and she releases it before he can reach her. Red magic pulses out from her hands and hits Steve’s shield, sending it and him flying backwards to land on the ground again. His bones ache, healed but not quite fully recovered from the bashing they had taken just last night.

On the floor below, where Klaue and his associate have landed, the two make their way through the dark tunnels as Klaue holds the stub of his bleeding arm as much as he can. “Shoot them.” he hisses to his friend.

“Which ones?” the man asks.

“ _All of them!_ ”

The man disappears ahead of Klaue with a bunch of his teammates behind him, all holding guns and shooting to kill.

In the outskirts of the huge underbelly of the ship where the Avengers fight is Natasha and Clint. The echo of guards’ footsteps and their angry shouts catches Natasha’s attention, and she whirls around to see them emerging from the lower floors and onto the floor that they battle on. The popping sound of bullets fills the air, some aimed at her and some not.

Then men round the corner and dive at her with their guns and loud shouts, causing her to have to slide backwards as they rocket past and use her hand to slam them into the wall behind her. Then another one comes at her from the front and she jabs out her first into his face before slinging an arm around his neck and using him to swing around, running on the walls, and roundhouse kick another oncoming guard in the face. Then she brings the man she had been holding onto over her shoulder and slams him onto the floor, where he groans and goes still just like his comrades.

Up on a platform a couple floors above the central bridge, Clint poises on a railing, taking out men from afar with his arrows. They hit the floor before they even had a chance to scream.

In the air between the floors and above the huge cavern in the belly of this ship, Tony still continues to fight Ultron in his Iron Man suit. The blows he takes to his suit are responded to with blasts from his repulsors, and the two roll in the air as they fight, creating distance from the rest of the fray. 

Meanwhile Steve and Thor still remain on the bridge where they had been talking with Ultron, fighting the Iron Legion bots he had set upon them. Thor launches himself into the air with one as Steve hurls his shield at the same bot, planning to hit it with a double attack. But then: a flash of blue, a disturbance in the air, and a sharp blast of pain in Steve’s jaw that sends him backwards to the floor.

The enhanced. Smacked him in the jaw. He rubs his chin bitterly as he sees Thor throw his hammer again, and the flash of blue next to it. Next thing he knows there is a huge crash as the twin, Pietro, goes smashing through the railings and into the cavern below, pulled along by the uncontrollable force of Thor’s hammer. Pietro lands amidst the Stark weaponry in huge tanked boxes, piles of missiles, and groans. 

Tony and Ultron's fight up above has taken a turn, as Ultron escapes Tony’s clutches and goes rocketing through the roof of the great ship and into the sky above. Iron Man follows him, and the two soar higher and higher into the air above the Salvage Yard and muddy marshland surrounding, Tony gaining on Ultron in his pursuit.

Back below, the Iron Legionnaire has Steve’s shield, and as the bot comes towards him Steve jumps and grabs a hold of the smooth metal, spinning around so he ends up behind the bot, one hand still on the shield. With a groan of exertion against the fighting power of the metal bots, he wrenches the shield back against the robots neck, and then Thor comes and severs the robots head with his hammer, knocking it off the top of Steve’s shield and smashing it to pieces. 

In the same movement, just as the robot falls, Steve jumps back up and into the air, turning again in a mid-air pirouette to sling his shield in the direction of an oncoming group of human guards. It hits each one of them in the chest, knocking them down, before returning to him. Then, out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Pietro, the fast one, trying to get back up in the weapon storage cavern below. He jumps down, appearing in front of Pietro just as he looks up, to which Steve rams him in the chest with his shield, sending him back down to the floor again.

“Stay down, kid.” he warns, before turning and leaving as fast as he can.

Over in the corner of a platform unseen, Ultron purrs to Wanda, whose red magic flickers and turns between her hands.

“It’s time for some mind games.” 

Back in the Quinjet where Bruce waits for the others, he hears the commotion in the coms. “Guys, is this a Code Green?” But all that answers is static and shouting.

Back in the ship, Thor walks down a passageway before Wanda suddenly appears out in front of him. Her red magic shifts, jerking, and then flows with a jolt into Thor’s head. His eyes glow red as the magic sinks in.

“Thor! Status?” Steve calls in his coms as he looks up to see a disortanted Thot standing on a platform.

“The girl tried to warp my mind. Take special care, I doubt a human could keep her at bay. Fortunately, I am mighty.” thor says, but then seemingly walks into Asgard there and then, where a party echoes round him. Maybe not so mighty after all.

Steve is just taking out one of Klaue’s men when the blue blur comes at him again. He doesn't even see when it hits, but then he is flying backwards and crashes to the floor amidst a bunch of supplies by a small set of stairs. Wanda then descends them, crouching down by him almost caressing the red magic in her hands before sending it into Steve’s mind, where it keens a high pitched scream that makes Steve scrunch up his face at the discomfort. 

On the same platform just a little way away, Natasha’s brain fogs as her eyes turn red, Wanda’s magic floating around her head before it infiltrates it, tantalizing in its power.

“This is going very well.” Ultron hums through the body of an Iron Legion bot who packs up the remainder of the vibranium to get away with.

As most of the Avengers swim in the haze of their newly muddled up brains, Clint continues to take down guards, managing to wipe out all the remaining men with ease, and when Wanda tries to use her mind control on him, he whirls and sticks a paralyzing clasp arrow to Wanda’s forehead that diables her mind powers, making her tremble and jerk, immobilized in the current. 

“I've done the whole mind control thing. Not a fan.” he says savagely. 

But just then, Pietro enters the scene, kicking Barton backwards through a pane of glass onto a floor below. He scoops a disabled Wanda into his arms, takes one look at Clint, and is gone before Clint even has a chance to blink.

“Yeah, you better run.” he grunts under his breath, before collapsing back on the broken glass again.

In the dark passageways in which they walk, Steve pulls his helmet off his head and drops to the floor at the top of a set of stairs, hoping to relieve a building pressure that blurs everything in front of him, but instead it gets worse, orange lights flickering in front of his eyes even though they aren't really there. Or maybe they are. He can't be sure.

Natasha walks in her daze towards a set of stairs. At the top of it sits a helmet, dark blue and painfully familiar, though she can't quite place why. It’s like her brain is being pulled back from behind, slowed almost to a stop so that she processes everything over twice as slowly than usual.

There is also a sense of fear pitched deep in her chest that seems so far to have no discernable source, but then her light feet touch the top steps, and she descends slowly, and everything changes.

There is a flash, and then the rail that Natasha’s hand falls on is wooden, not thin and metal like it was on the ship. It has intricate carvings, elegant and swirling in their place in the wood. The staircase is long, and the steps are made of cool white marble. Marble.

She is in an old building, materialistic and delicate in its appearance, but it takes Natasha less than a second to recognise it. She could recognise this place anywhere. It is the place of her nightmares. 

Yes, everything is just as she remembers it. The lamps, casting yellow light out of their opaque glass shades. The cold, harsh light that fills the building despite the colour of those yellow lamps. The stillness. Horrible, chilling fear. Disobedience, death. The feeling of aching bones after rigorous training, day after day. A small redheaded child, lying alone in her bed, crying herself to sleep every night from the pain and always hoping for a better tomorrow. The tomorrow that never came.

Natasha stumbles down those stairs, the memories flooding her too much to bear, opening up a hole in her chest as the pain flows free. 

What she focuses on is right in front of her, but she doesn't need to look around to place the position of everything surrounding her. The leaderboard plaques, huge on the wall in the dark shade of wood matching the stairs. The anticipation in her childlike self’s heart, staring up at the numbers, waiting to see her name at the top. The terror striking her when she saw she was not first. The punishment after, and the aching weals as she lay in bed that very night.

Everything in this place holds a different memory, from the countless days and months and years she had spent as an inhabitant. The Red Room was never given it’s name for the hue of its walls, but instead for the colour of the blood that flowed if you ever tried to escape them.

The sight before Natasha transfixes her because it is so painfully familiar. The two guards standing sentry against the thick wooden pillars, beyond which is the glass door with no handle. 

Natasha walks towards it, almost unknowing of her own movements, a puppet pulled by strings in this hell made personal for her. Inside, the ballerinas. So synchronized in their dancing, their strange little dance which seems too big, so grand or important for them. It is so much more than a ballet dance.

Their feet, barely even touching the floor, land lightly, and a voice barks out from the edge where a middle aged man watches them, smoking. “Again.”

The silence as the young women dance presses in on Natasha’s ears, reminding her of the threats of a permanent silence from _her._ That woman. 

And then, as if purely by the thought of her, she appears.

“You’ll break them.” Natasha says breathily, unable to take her eyes away from the movement of the dancers. But it isn't them she is talking about.

From behind her, Madame B speaks, and the sound of her voice grates in Natasha’s mind, an inexplicable torture that her brain associates with the sound of that voice. 

“Only the breakable ones.”

And she, along with Natasha, looks at the group of young girls, not older than ten, any of them, sitting in a neat formation in their pinafore dresses and buttoned shirts. Fear lances their smooth faces, features still young and innocent, but not for long. But they, like Natasha, can't seem to take their eyes off the dancers.

“You are made of marble.” Madame B continues, and the words echo, so clear in Natasha’s head. It feels like yesterday.

Marble. Indestructible. Ruthless. The Black Widow. 

“We’ll celebrate after the graduation ceremony,” 

Flashes. The cold table. The thin paper gown. A pair of scissors on an instrument table. Pain. Over and over again. 

The dancers continue to dance, swift in an elongated smooth pirouette, turning and turning and yet somehow strained. As if every movement, no matter how perfect, inflicts an incredible pain that they are unable to visibly show. 

It is as if she is sixteen again, and her voice sounds childlike as she speaks next. “What if I fail?”

The same words she had said back then, in fear to Madame B as she prepared to graduate. 

The memories that had been taunting her so relentlessly since the moment she stepped foot here suddenly overcome Natasha, and in an instant she is there.

Her hair, a weaker red, part of it pulled back to the back of her head, bangs covering her forehead, creased in concentration. Then it flattens out, Natasha becomes overwhelmingly calm, she looks up to the target in front of her, and raises the gun.

_Bang. Bang._

The bullets hit exactly where she had planned them to. One in the head of the dummy, then one in its fictional heart.

She swaps hands mid shoot, releases the catch and shoots again with her weaker right hand. She still hits both targets. 

_Bang. Bang._

Swap again.

 _Bang, bang, bang._

Three shots in quick succession, all hitting one after another directly through the center of the chest.

Then the target flickers, and it is a man. Whimpering with a woven bag over his head. Years of training, led up to this. Years of mental manipulation, pain, dehumanizing and stripping down of everything that had made her human. All led up to this. 

Natasha doesn't hesitate in pulling the trigger.

The crack of the bullet becomes the pop of a cork as it shoots out of a champagne bottle.

The lights are orange and glaring, and the noise far too loud, assaulting Steve’s eardrums as he wanders through this crowded room. A ballroom? A club? It’s full of people, laughing and shouting, the sound of old jazz music echoing over their voices. Huge banners overhead proclaim 'VICTORY'. And then Steve realises where he is. He's back in 1945. And they've won the war. 

But he doesn't want to be here.

People around him giggle, the flash of a camera goes off; everything seems garish and unreal. Like it's fake. False. Someone bumps into Steve as he speeds up a little, trying to make his way through the throng, and panic ignites in him. He has to get out. He doesn't belong here. He needs to leave. Now.

At a table to his left, two men chortle as the first cleans up wine spilt over the seconds chest. The stain looks eerily like blood.

Everyone moves in synchronization, like a group of dolls puppeteered by a string master. False smiles on their faces, jubilation in this outlandish scene from a once possible past.

The pure orange of the light fills the air and casts a sunset hue over everything, but it conflicts Steve's brain. The colour orange sparks something in him like a feeling, a pull in him just to get _out of here,_ but he feels like he can't escape. There is someone waiting for him, far away from here.

Just then, as he stands dizzied and panicked in the center of the dancers, he feels a presence behind him, and turns to see Peggy Carter, vibrant in her youth and wearing the same red lipstick she always did. And then it hits him. The Stork Club. A week next Saturday. This _is_ the week next Saturday.

_Don't you dare be late._

His dance with Peggy. This is his chance. And yet he still feels wrong.

“Are you ready for our dance?” she asks him, but Steve still feels confused. Out of time.

 _The man out of time,_ Loki had said. Years ago, so long ago. Something from that time pulls at him again, splitting him in half from his place here. His dance with Peggy.

"The war's _over,_ Steve." Peggy says imploringly to him. "We can go _home._ "

But the word strikes a chord in Steve's heart. Home. A dark room in Washington DC, with the lights off but the windows open. Whispered secrets, building trust. The silence that only comes when two people understand each other.

This isn't home. 

“Imagine it.”

But when he turns again, everything is gone. The club is empty, there are no people anywhere, and Peggy behind him has vanished. Nothing left of the life he had left behind in the ice seventy odd years ago.

_We can go home. Imagine it._

Where is his home?

And then the aching pull in him manifests into a presence in his heart that makes it swell with an indescribable feeling, and he hears a voice, layered over with a thousand words, echoing through his head with images he thought he had forgotten. 

_I trust you, Steve. Steve, we’re gonna be okay. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations. Who do you want me to be? Kiss me. I think I’m in love with you too. I owe you. You deserve someone better than me. I’ll see you around, soldier._

Red hair, green eyes, small hands that fit almost perfectly into his. Someone he has left behind. Someone he needs to get back to. The future may be hard to understand, but she was the only thing that made sense to him there, and she became his past, his present and his future all at once. She was the one who kept him grounded there, and so there he found a home in the modern day, and left his past behind in the process.

Her face forms in his mind, so clear that it could be right in front of him and he wouldn't know the difference. 

“Where’s Nat?” 

He says it to no one, and no one hears. But then the image of her face in front of him seems to drift away, like fog, and when he reaches out to stop it, his hand falls right through it. She's gone, and he is stuck exactly where he doesn't want to be. And it is this that makes his brain seize, his eyes widen in fear, and his heart chill in his chest.

The chill of the room in which young Natasha takes her exam raises goosebumps on her arms, but they are nothing compared to the paralyzing fear and dread that blazes through her as she is put to the test in her examination. 

The two assistants, put there for her to fight and prove her worth. Taught that to prove your worth was to kill and win and have no qualms about it. 

She grapples with the first man, spinning up and over his shoulders in the classic move she uses well into her years, squeezing his head with her thighs to build the pressure in his brain. Then she jumps down, and the man falls, slamming his head sickeningly hard on the side of the grand piano in the corner of the room. The sound turns Natasha’s stomach and guilt fills her, that she might have killed him. Instead of fighting the next man who has just got to his feet, she succumbs, numbly letting him wrap his arm around her throat and pull her small frame against him. At the sound of that man’s head colliding with the piano, she had been reminded of what waited for her after this.

The graduation ceremony, dreaded, and then worse, the life after that. Serving a country in which she matters less than an ant scuttling across the ground. A life full of not really living.

She struggles under the man’s arm, which constricts around her throat tighter each passing second, attempting to escape but not really _trying_.

She feels the disappointed gaze of Madame B as she watches, casting in her that long familiar fear. 

After a few more fruitless seconds of wrestling with the man but failing to escape from his clutches, Natasha gives up, slapping his arm in a signal to release. He does, and Natasha moves away, bending over slightly so her hair obscures her tearfilled eyes and trying to catch her breath.

“Sloppy. Pretending to fail.” Madame B says sharply, critically. 

Natasha straightens up slowly, her eyes fixed on the ground, breathing heavily, fighting to keep the tears at bay.

The next time Madame B speaks, it seems impossibly that she is closer to Natasha. Her voice whispers in her ear, blowing air in a motion that sends shivers down Natasha’s back.

“The ceremony is necessary, for you to take your place in the world.”

The cricking of bones after hours of extensive ballet dancing. The head of the man under his woven bag as he fights for the last moments of his life. The door at the end of the corridor, between the grubby tiles painted with flowers of all things. ‘ОПЕРАЦИОННАЯ’ on the plaque on the front of the door. The finger marks on the glass, long sweeping lines from generations of girls doing anything they could to escape, to avoid the graduation ceremony. 

“I have no place in the world.” Natasha says despairingly, her heart finally sighing its last breath, giving up on a life ever fulfilling enough to warrant happiness. 

“Exactly.”

A hand, clamped over her face. A head, her own, slammed down onto the metal of the gurney as she is wheeled towards hell. A climbing fear, hurtling up her chest and into her throat, so intense that she trembles, no thanks to the paper thin hospital gown that scrapes her skin like sandpaper. Her heart, beating a mile a minute as she is sped down this long corridor on her gurney. The girls she passes in the hall, so young but with smooth skin where their mouths should have been, a horrible nightmarish scene depicting the theft of their voices as little girls when they entered this hell on earth. This room named red for the blood. The Red Room. They stare at her blankly as she passes, nothing behind their eyes, just watching her.

And then the gurney speeds up and the noise around her amplifies louder, whispers from the days that would come after, pointing and gossiping and laughing, the evil giggles from girls no older than she, and a scream in her head than none but her seems to be able to hear, getting louder and louder and making her almost cry out loud at how unbearable it is. The tears that would fall silently from her eyes in the operating room without her even making a sound, sliding down the sides of her face as she lies on a table and waits for it. Waits for the end of everything, it seems.

And then when it was over: the blazing, aching pain from her stomach and the small cut below her belly button that lasted for days and weeks after, and when she woke up in the recovery room alone. Escorted back to her dormitory where she weeped through the night, unaware and yet completely knowing of what she had lost that day. The last thing that made her truly human. 

It followed her then and it follows her still, haunting her in nightmares that leave her thrashing in bed even now, and waking up to sweat and tears. That day and all the ones before it, the nightmare itself that was living, existing, training in the Red Room. 

And lastly, that empty hole in her that felt like a part of her had been taken, that day when they did it to her. Which, in a way, she supposed it had. They took the part of her that enabled her to love something more than any mission, perhaps even more than life itself. They took her ability to become a mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it. The visions: remastered. Well, I mean, only really Steve's. I figured Nat already goes through quite a bit in hers, and she didn't really need any more guilt or regret to follow her around.
> 
> What do you think? Do you think I wrote an accurate representation of how Natasha and Steve were feeling in those scenes? I really enjoyed writing in the depth that I did in this chapter, alluding to past memories and the like.  
> And that bit where Steve remembers all the things Natasha said to him? Heartbreaking. Gorgeous. Emotional. 
> 
> Anyways, leave a comment, I always love reading those.


	8. You Know I'll Take My Heart Clean Apart If It Helps Yours Beat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *prepares for the onslaught of disappointment from readers for not posting for so long* 
> 
> Hello hello hello! I truly am so sorry it has been as long as it has been, but recently I started working again and now have little or no time to myself/when I'm not working, to write in. This chapter has been written on the offbeats if you will, because I have such little time. As a result, I will probably be extending the upload time to once a week, because I just don't have the same kind of time anymore. I definitely have not abandoned this story and still love writing it, but my daytime work takes it out of me. Thank you all for sticking around, and here is your long awaited chapter!

Two - Sleeping at Last

LOCATION: AFRICAN COAST, 2.0469° N, 45.3182° E, SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN, 33.7243° S, 15.9961° W  
DATE: 03/21/2015-03/22/2015

In the bogged marshland, as the majority of the Avengers tackle with the cruel monsters that rage in their minds, Wanda and Pietro kneel, Wanda gasping at the pain that the arrow Clint had stuck on her forehead has left. Pietro kneels helplessly beside her, his hands hovering, unsure of how to help.

“What can I do?”

Wanda shakes her head, face still scrunched up against the searing pain.

“Ahh,” she inhales sharply. “It hurts.”

“I'm going to kill him.” Pietro growls ferociously. “I'll be right back.” But before he can get up, Wanda pulls him back to her.

“I’m alright.” she assures him, her breathing evening out and her eyes opening darkly. “I want…” she pants and her head turns to the side, to the edge of the marsh where the grassland begins and where Bruce stands uneasily in the Quinjet, looking on at the chaos happening in the great ship beyond both of them. “I want to finish the plan. I want the big one.”

Back in the air above the huge muddy marshland, Tony and Ultron roll in the air in their metal bodies, fighting and both attempting to bring the other down. As soon as one escapes, blasts of energy are fired by the other, only to be retaliated with by his opponent. This repeats itself, a dastardly cycle which will always only end in defeat. And it does, when Tony shoots a grenade into Ultron which explodes and sends him falling down to the ground. He crashes into the side of a sunken cargo ship deep in the mud and Tony lands gracefully after him, approaching the villainous robot who is beginning to sit up.

“Uh, the vibriaums getting away.” Ultron ploys in an attempt to distract Stark.

Tony folds his outstretched fist so a small rocket grenade not much larger than a board marker pops out of the top of his suit arm, poised and ready to fire at Ultron.

“And you’re not going anywhere.”

“Of course not, I'm already there.” Ultron says cryptically. “You'll catch on. But first, you might need to catch Dr. Banner.”

Anger and realisation bursts in Tony, and in spite, he fires the rocket launcher grenade at Ultron anyway, whose metal body explodes. He then flies into the air, on the way to find Bruce.

There, he finds out through the web that Hulk has attacked a nearby town next to the marshland, and the level of destruction is already huge.

“Natasha, I could really use a lullaby,” he calls into the coms.

But Natasha is unreachable, stuck in a far flung world of her worst memories, trapped in a loop of repeating screams of pain, and tears, and the red hot flame of a newly sprung fire.

Clint reaches her, cups her face in his, and looks into her unreceptive eyes. Her head sways in his hands, her mouth open in a terrified daze, and Clint can clearly see straight off the bat that there is no reaching her. Her pupils are dilated, and Clint could swear he could have seen the shadows of her nightmares following her inside them. 

“Well, that's not gonna happen.” Clint says to Tony, gently reaching for Natasha’s arm to sling around his shoulder and help her to her feet. “Not for a while. The whole team is down, you got no back up here.” he speaks to Tony through the coms.

Around the ship, Steve and Thor surface from their visions, Thor getting to his feet while Steve lies there, frozen for a few seconds, the depth of his visions suddenly overwhelming him a little. When he eventually gets up, he realises his cheeks are wet, and when he touches them, his hands come away with tears. 

And so, from the air, Tony resorts to a last case measure. “I'm calling in VERONICA.”

The great mechanism hoisted up in space is just then released from its orbit, and falls slowly down to earth, to the African city that Tony flies over now, following the Hulk. Tony can already hear the distant shouts of civilians, and his heart begins to thump faster in the suit.

By the time he arrives on the ground, the HulkBuster armour forming around him, the Hulk is already enraged in a circle of police officers down a side street, and Tony stomps down particularly loudly to get his attention. He succeeds.

“Alright everybody, stand down!” Tony shouts through the combination of both his suits to the crowd in the city and policemen surrounding Hulk. He realises that most of them probably can't understand him anyway, but casts that thought irritatedly from his mind. He calls to Hulk. “You listening? That little witch is messing with your mind.” Even from inside his double layered suit, Tony can see the red that flashes in the Hulk’s eyes, a telltale sign that Wanda is in control of his reality. “You're stronger than her, you're smarter than her, you're Bruce Banner.”

Hulk roars in anger. 

“Right, right, right! Don't mention puny Banner!” Tony shouts apologetically. 

But just then, Hulk throws a nearby car at Tony, which he is forced to catch. The Hulk advances on him, plowing his way through it and straight into Tony. Tony is cast back, but he immediately gets back up and comes at Hulk again, taking him by the throat and dragging him through the street so his head breaks through the thin layers of concrete. Hulk swipes at Tony, one blow hits him and he goes flying again, landing roughly at a skid on the giant feet of his suit. Hulk jumps at Tony _again_ , but this time Tony manages to deflect him with a repulsor beam that sends him bouncing off the brick wall of a building and into a food lorry, whose contents spills onto the road as it is hit. Tony rounds the side of the lorry only to be hit by the Hulk again, and this time is sent high into the air, where he collides with the top floor of a fancy resort looking building and falls back down to the ground. 

Tony rights himself in the air, landing facing the building he just crashed into, when a blow to the back sends him crumbling, and then the Hulk is upon him again. 

“In the back?” Tony yells over the Hulk’s pummelling. “Dick move, Banner!”

Pinned down by the green rage monster, Tony is forced to sit helpless as parts of his suit are torn off left right and center by the Hulk, being tossed aside like garbage. In a last ditch effort, Tony reaches up a broken apart hand of his suit and aims a sloppy punch at Hulk, which remarkably hits. The power from his suit sends the Hulk miles away, where he goes barrelling into a crowded market place. Stalls are instantly crushed as glass shatters, screams echo and thousands of cultivated collections are destroyed. Tony, in his suit, gets to his feet now that Hulk is further away. He looks down at the left arm of his suit, severed off and impaled with some kind of yellow rod. Obviously not going to work. 

“VERONICA, gimme a hand.”

From the air above the city, the huge mechanism deploys several pieces of machinery, which soar towards Tony as he watches the Hulk hurtle back towards him through the remaining stranding structures of the marketplace. As the hand forms around the socket of his arm, Tony holds Hulk back with blasts from his repulsors, until the arm is fully formed and he desists.

The Hulk gains on him, raising a fist, and Tony rises to meet it. The impact of the collision of their two fists creates a supersonic field that blasts out invisibly from the meeting point. The air quivers and all glass in the vicinity is instantly shattered. More screams reverberate around the town as people struggle to escape from the scene.

When Hulk leaps at Tony again, the latter grabs him with his new fist and slams him down to the ground, where he uses his new fist to pummel the Hulk ferociously again and again relentlessly with no pause.

“Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep!” Tony repeats imploringly as he keeps hammering into the Hulk’s face. But he doesn't. No, instead he rises his fist to meet Tony’s, stopping him altogether. Then Hulk squeezes, but instead Tony retracts the fist of his suit and encases the Hulk’s arm in the rings of his suit.

“Okay, pal, we're gonna get you out of town.”

Tony flies into the air with Hulk hanging below him, attempting to escape the holds of Tony’s suit. But then Hulk uses his weight influence and they go swerving. 

“No, not that way, not that way!” Tony cries as the two of them go careering into the side of a building, landing in an elevator lobby. “Come on, Bruce! You gotta work with me!” Tony pins the Hulk up against the trembling brick wall as they fight, the two both grappling for power. Just then the elevator doors behind them open, the people inside immediately pressing the buttons to close the doors again once they saw what was outside.

But then Hulk kicks Tony away and he goes crashing into the tiny elevator full of people, which breaks off its thick metal lead and goes plummeting towards the ground. Tony dives for it before it can fall, just managing to grab a hold of the lead as the elevator reaches just above ground level.

“Everybody out!” he yells, and the people don't need telling twice. They jump out of the elevator onto the ground a couple feet below and run away fast. 

Tony looks up just as Hulk jumps from the floor of the building onto Tony, who manages to knock him away onto a great set of stairs that mostly crumble beneath him. Tony yields the broken elevator in his hand and begins to swing it around his head like a lasso as people run from under him. 

“Going to get ugly!” 

Tony descends on Hulk with the elevator, seconding it with a punch in the side of the head. This actually stills Hulk, possibly for the first time today, and for a moment Tony thinks all is finally well. But then Hulk turns to him, the evil in his eyes never more pronounced than now. His red eyes gleam malevolently, and Tony’s stomach drops.

“I’m sorry.” 

Tony tries to blast away but Hulk follows him, yanking him up the side of a building and through it in the process, punching and pummelling his suit repeatedly as they travel from building to building, climbing in altitude. Just as they are advancing up the side of a building, Hulk begins ripping more parts of Tony’s suit away, casting them into oblivion, and Tony’s machine beeps in alarm as many parts begin to fail. 

“Damage report.” he demands of the computer, but it barely buzzes an incoherent reply. “That's comprehensive. Show me something!” Tony begs of it as he grapples with Hulk, rolling in the air as they both take hits at each other. Just then, the computer shows him that an upcoming building ahead that is under construction is clear of all life signs and civilians. A perfect place to land. “How quickly can we buy this building?” Tony wonders aloud, but does not wait for an answer. Not that one was likely to come.

When they reach the direct overpass of the building, Tony drops Hulk towards it, climbing for a second in the air to gain momentum, and then he plunges. He strikes Hulk with one fist and forces him down through the floors of this barely assembled building, which crumble instantly under the weight of them both. They descend through the floors together, the clouds of smoke from the destruction of the building rising in speeds unparalleled and turning the sky a dark grey. 

People can run from it, but that is all they can do, as the wave of destruction sweeps upon them, those helpless to defend from it. Even the army, who have only now arrived on the scene, are powerless with their guns and tanks as Tony and the Hulk reach the bottom of this building with a deafening crash, debris collapsed all around them. The Hulk is initially angry when he surfaces the rubble, but upon seeing the destruction laid out before him, the red fades from his eyes and a little more sense returns. He looks around, first at the people fleeing, but then at the military with their raised guns. One of the men clicks his safety clutch, both a metaphorical and a physical trigger. The Hulk begins to roar, but then a fist comes out from nowhere and collides with the Hulk, knocking him out once and for all.

Back on the cargo ship, while Tony and the Hulk fought, what little Avengers left standing and relatively coherent had made their way back to the Avengers Quinjet in defeat. It's a wonder they even managed to make it back there, let alone help Tony take down an angry Hulk whose mind is controlled by Wanda, and it's all they could do not to collapse back down upon entering the ship. 

Natasha leant on Clint as they all boarded the ramp, Steve close behind and Thor following him. Both Steve and Natasha had automatically collapsed into foldable seats that surrounded an empty medibay in the center of the ship while Clint moved to the cockpit. Thor paced around the back, the air completely silent as everyone's heads echoed with the sounds from their dreams. This is how they sat, pretty much, until Tony managed to defeat the Hulk and brought him back to them in the form of Bruce Banner. Shaking, clammy and horrified, Tony sits him down with the rest of his teammates, and heads to the front of the ship to where Clint sits. They rise into the air, and soar into the darkening night.

Natasha is fixed in a semi stable pattern of waking and dreaming, flitting in and out of her horrific visions in periods, not even sure of whether they are memories or fiction at this point. They seem one and the same these days. She sits in her seat, unable to recall how she had got there, only aware of Steve’s focusing presence in the seat next to her. She believes that it is this, him, that surfaces her from her mental hell at intermittent points. Everyone else’s visions have faded somewhat, the power Wanda had over them waned, but for Natasha, once the box inside of her with all those horrible experiences had been opened, it was like it could never shut again. A Pandora's box, if you will. 

Her shoulders feel heavy with the weight of everything that courses like an overwhelming fire in her brain, and tears prick at her eyes, threatening to fall over, but mostly she just feels _tired_. Processing those memories, the ones that play on loop in her head right now, was an exhausting job the first time around, and now it seems that she must do it all over again. Natasha keeps hearing the hum of voices in this Quinjet she sits in, but as though it is through a long tunnel, to which the other end is miles away. It never reaches her brain, and it's just useless noise to her. She doubts much could get through to her at this point.

She knows she's not the only one, but her brain feels like it has been completely crushed. Walls: broken down. Self defense strategies: mushed. Stability: stolen away. She feels lost, drifting in a never ending nothingness filled with her worst experiences, memories and nightmares. And she can’t get out. She can’t even _see_ the way out, let alone find the way out.

_Pain._

All forms of it, everywhere she looks and everywhere she feels. A paralyzing fear and a horrific anxiety, crawling its way up her throat and freezing her from the inside out. Unmoving, unforgiving, frozen, solid. But still, one light shines through. Through the opaque ice, shining brilliantly and resiliently though. From her right side. Where the beacon sits.

See, for Steve, far _too many_ words are circling _his_ brain. Fear, guilt, regret, loss, grief, stress, and so many more that go careering around his brain in relentless circles. It's like he can't think, when really he is thinking too much. He keeps looking to his left, where his haunting flash of orange reminds him of Natasha sitting there. It's like he has to keep reminding himself, she is here. She did not evaporate into thin air, he hasn't lost her just yet. She is still here. Worse for wear, in a terrible shape, of shape, but she is _here_. 

For Steve, he can't stop thinking about the dream. The vision. What it meant. It certainly wasn't memories from his past, he knows he has never experienced that. More like a horrible, tormenting, _possibility._ He has no doubt that Natasha had experienced her past. The look in her eyes and her dazed demeanour, it was everything she had looked like when she first told Steve about it, ramped up times a thousand. He wants to reach out to her, to hug her, tell her it will be alright, do everything he had done when she had first told him and more. Be everything she never had. But instead, he sits here, hoping to be of service just by his presence, which is sometimes all that we can do. And as he sits, his mind wanders again.

The dream. The orange, and its distinctiveness. It was everywhere, like he was looking through an orange film at the scene before him. It was more than just the lights. And then it morphed into her hair and her voice and all the things she had said to him in his worst times, their best times. And then when he had reached out to grab it, it had disappeared. And _that_ is what had freaked him out more than anything. Because imagine being that close, and missing. Imagine having her, and losing her.  
It's a feeling he knows all too well. 

And the setting. After the war, his dance with Peggy. It was a taunt, definitively. Reminding him that as a man of the past, he can never truly belong in the future. His biggest insecurity. _The man out of time._ Natasha had told him, and proved to him, time and time again, that he belonged here. That he made a home. With her, with the Avengers. He made a home in the future, and it is where he belongs, but his past still follows him, not unlike he is sure it does for Natasha. But the truth is, he is scared to go back there. After working for so long to move on and find himself a new home in the present day, to be forced to revert back to a time long forgotten, a distant memory, and undergo the process all over again, is torturous. And Steve can't even figure out _why_. There are so many questions still left to figure out, and such little time. What is it about him, that fears change like a plague worse than the devil itself? Will he ever find out? Somehow he doubts it.

Across the ship, Bruce turns over as he leans against the center medibay of the Quinjet, his skin a pale sheen as nightmares taunt his disrupted sleep. Thor continues to pace the back of the ship as Steve struggles to process his vision and Natasha writhes in the remainder of hers. Tony holds on a call with Maria Hill back in Manhattan while Clint flies. 

“The news is loving you guys... Nobody else is.” she explains the fallouts of the Hulk’s destruction in the city off the coast of the Salvage Yard. “There's been no official call for Banner's arrest, but it's in the air.”

Silence.

“Stark Relief Foundation?” Tony asks.

“Already on the scene.” 

Breathing comes a little easier.

“How’s the team?” Maria asks. Tony takes one look around the ship, where his team is a compiled mess of broken shells, shattered by the powers of Ulron’s lackeys. Wanda. 

“Everyone’s…” He’s lost for words. “We took a hit.” Tony summarises, unsure of how else to describe the emaciated looks of his friends before him. “We’ll shake it off.” 

He sure hopes so.

“Well for now I'd stay in stealth mode, and stay away from here.” Maria advises.

Wanted again. Criminals. Hiding from the law. It’s all on repeat in Steve’s mind, a never ending circle.

“So, run and hide?” Tony sighs.

“Until we can find Ultron, I don't have a lot else to offer.” Maria says grimly, and Tony nods begrudgingly.

“Neither do we.” Tony hangs up the call with Maria and takes one long glance around at his teammates again. 

As he looks, he sees Steve look up at Natasha again for about the fourth time in this minute alone, Tony suspects. Steve’s eyes are troubled and yearning, and it disrupts Tony’s ideal of the man in his head a little just by the desperation in which he sees Steve look at Natasha. He’s never seen it before. The man who had it all, longing for what is right in front of him. Just then, Steve’s hand twitches, before automatically drawing back, and Tony could have sworn that if he hadn't restrained it, Steve's hand would have decisively reached out to take Natasha’s. 

Tony looks away, eyebrows furrowed, moving up to the cockpit where Clint sits steady and focused at the controls.

“Hey, you wanna switch out?” he asks Clint, but the latter shakes his head. 

“No, I'm good.” He pauses. “If you wanna get some kip, now's a good time, cause we're still a few hours out.”

“A few hours from... where?” Tony asks, confused. 

Clint hides a small smile as he replies.

“A safe house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been like a week in the making: writing the beginning the day after I posted the last chapter, the thought tracks for Steve and Natasha at 2am a couple nights ago, and every other bit in the moments in between. I hope you all like what I did with Steve and Natasha in this chapter, even if it was focused more on them as individuals rather as them as an item. I really enjoyed delving so far into these people's minds, their deepest fears and ingrained childhood notions, I found it very cathartic.
> 
> Anyways, as I said at the beginning, the next chapter might not be up for a while, but I will try my best.
> 
> See you all soon!


	9. Please Don't Be In Love With Someone Else

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I feel like I owe an explanation, because it's been, what, like over 2 weeks since my last update? Phew. Well, long story short, I fell ill, and stuff happened. This story and these characters got pushed aside in the struggle to conserve what little life I had left. Wow that was dramatic. I just mean I went through some stuff. For everyone who has come here to read again, thank you for sticking around. Sorry it's been so long. Enjoy :)

Enchanted - Taylor Swift 

LOCATION: SAFE HOUSE, MISSOURI, UNITED STATES, 37.9643° N, 91.8318° W  
DATE:03/23/2015

With every inch of sunlight that leaks through the clouds they fly through, Natasha seems to be coming back. As the sky lightens from a dark navy, to dark grey and then a pale silver, Steve sees her eyes sharpen and her pupils shrink, flickering, disjointed movements of a soul fighting the clutches of a force far stronger than it.

And then, an hour from their destination, though Steve and Natasha did not know it yet, the sun suddenly breaks through, a blazing stream of yellow and gold that fills the Quinjet and stretches in an aureate haze from wall to wall. At the great sweeping movement, Natasha’s head snaps up, and her eyes meet Steve’s, who had been watching her with concern. She holds his gaze, seemingly still confused, as the sunlight glints off his eyes, tinting them a blue-gold mix, before breaking away.

Steve can't help but feel disappointed when she does. For a moment there, just a moment, he had believed… But he had been wrong. Imagining things. As he always does.

None of the Avengers, in their now fading fragile states, have realised just where they are, and when they drop down in the outskirts of Missouri, United States, they might as well have been on another planet - Clint doubts any of them would notice. Tony, however, eyes the area outside with doubtful eyes as the Quinjet soars over a low treeline and begins to sink down to the ground behind them. 

Surrounding them is, what looks to be, a farm. Great expanses of rich green field encompass a large farmhouse sitting squat in the center with an adjacent barn and multiple kinds of vehicle littering the dust front yard. Power lines swoop in graceful dips over the land, signalling a sufficient source of electricity available all around the farm. Pretty modern. Pretty nifty. Clint shuts down the engines of the ship and exits the cockpit, entering the main body of the ship and heading straight for Natasha.

Natasha doesn't protest as Clint slides his arm around Natasha’s waist and helps her to her feet and towards the lowering ramp out of the ship. She may be coming back to her own mind a little more every second, but her legs still feel like lead, and like they might give way at any second.

Clint takes the lead, exiting the ship, and the others follow him, Steve towards the back, wishing to be as far away from the lingering hurt on Natasha’s face as possible. His shoulders feel heavy as the group snakes in a single file line towards the farmhouse, and he knows it isn't because of the shield on his back.

They near this great house, looking more and more domestic the closer they draw to it, and curiosity sparks in Steve’s mind, a welcome distraction from the dull ache the mind control has left on him. Apparently, he's not the only one.

“What is this place?” Thor asks as they mount the stairs, Natasha’s feet stumbling a little beneath her. Clint catches Natasha before she trips and approaches the front door. 

“A safe house?” Tony answers Thor, unsure.

“Let’s hope.” Clint says as the door opens and he helps Natasha through.

They enter into a hall, to the right of which is a living room, and ahead of which is a set of stairs and a narrow corridor to the left leading to the rest of this house. Clint leads them into the living room, small and quaint, as he calls, “Honey! I’m home!”

The living room shows distinct signs of being thoroughly lived in, and by what looks like _young people_ too. The countertops in the kitchen that lies beyond the living room is littered with colourful plastic utensils, cups and plates. The small table in the corner is surrounded by tiny padded stools, far too big for a grown human to sit on. The fridge, covered in sugar paper scribbles, crayoned drawings stuck pride in place for everyone to see. 

A safe house. Sure.

In response to Clint’s call, a woman begins to come round the corner from the kitchen and into the adjoining living room. She is heavily pregnant, and holds a pile of yet more glittery pieces of sugar paper art in her left hand. She smiles when she sees Clint, Steve and the others, even if she is rather confused.

“Hi,” Clint says apologetically. “Company. Sorry I didn't call ahead.”

With everyone else's bewildered glances on them, Clint leaves Natasha to embrace the woman. He kisses her gently on the lips before bringing her close in a tight hug. Immediately when Clint’s arms left Natasha’s waist, she had looked up in surprise at the now lack of contact, only to realise where she actually was. Her still scarred heart thumps warmly now, instantly comforted in this familiar presence. Instinctively, Natashas eyes seek the body of the woman she knows inhibits this house so well, and finds her as she breaks away from Clint’s arms. She smiles.

From behind Clint embracing this unknown woman, Tony speaks up. “This is… an agent of some kind.” He presumes this, because the alternative doesn't seem to fit together in his mind.

“Gentlemen, this is Laura.” Clint says, turning to the group standing quite befuddled behind him.  


Laura waves a little back. “I… know all your names.”

The group stare back, dumbfounded. Tony sticks up a little hand in awkward greeting.

Just then, the patter of small feet thundering down the stairs draws the attention of Steve and some other members of the group. Clint moves towards the doorway in anticipation, a grin drawing across his face as a little girl followed swiftly by an older boy comes rocketing round the corner and towards Clint. The little girl yells for her father as she jumps into his arms while the boy buries his head into his dad's shoulder. Clint hugs his children tightly, greeting them with cries of exhilaration for a few moments.

Natasha’s heart leaps at the sight of the children rounding the corner, whom she knows and loves, seldom to do so in the group of the rest of the Avengers. She smiles as they hug their dad, grateful for their electric, childlike joy that sparks instant happiness in her heart. Seeing them is like breaking free from her dark waters, into fresh, clean air. 

Steve tilts his head to the side as he watches this scene, trying to hide a smile. There is no pretending now. These are definitely Clint's children. This is his family… somehow.

“These are… smaller agents.” Tony says, eyes narrowing as he eyes the children, but everyone has pretty much drawn the same conclusion as Steve now. 

Clint puts down the little girl, who looks up at her dad with wide eyes. “Did you bring Auntie Nat?” she says innocently, to which Natasha’s face lights up. Her favourite girl. 

She moves from her corner of the room towards the girl, who is called Lila. “Why don’t you hug her and find out?” she growls playfully. 

Lila looks round and runs towards Natasha, who scoops her into her arms as Lila squeals. Steve looks on, this exchange having an unprecedented effect on his heart, which he is struggling to define. Seeing Natasha with children, it’s such a natural, easy gift. 

Suddenly, he wants to hunt down and personally murder every single person ever associated with the Red Room. For taking this from her. For preventing her from experiencing this complete gift. 

Natasha walks off with Lila in her arms as Steve turns cordially to Laura. “Sorry for barging in on you.”

“Yeah, we would have called ahead, but we were busy having no idea that you existed.” Tony says, with an attitude to boot. 

“Yeah, well Fury helped me set this up when I joined. He kept it off S.H.I.E.L.D's files, I'd like to keep it that way.” Clint explains why they are only now just finding out he has a wife and two (and a half) children. Well, apart from Natasha. Apparently she already knew, and knows them all well. 

“I figure it's a good place to lay low.” Clint continues.

Steve sees Natasha and Bruce exchange an awkward moment at that point. Is it to do with the fact that Natasha knew and didn't tell anyone? Steve understands that it was necessary to protect Clint and his children, but does Bruce realise that too? An emotion, not unlike jealousy Steve thinks, burns hotly in him. It wouldn't be the first time. 

Behind him he hears a crunch, and looks round to see Thor has stopped on one of the children’s toy constructions, the plastic structure crumbled under his heavy boot. Steve looks reproachfully at Thor, who nudges the bricks surreptitiously under an armchair with his foot. 

Over by Clint’s family, Natasha puts down Lila with a last kiss on her head, before moving over to Laura and giving her a tight hug. Laura had been an impenetrable force of love and support for Natasha ever since they met, and they had soon formed an extremely strong bond. Natasha felt like she could tell Laura anything and always have her support, and she had been one of the people Natasha had missed most in her endeavours around the world. 

“I missed you.” she tells Laura as they break apart and Laura smiles warmly back.

Natasha reaches out her hands to touch Laura’s round belly as she asks, “How’s little Natasha, huh?”

The last time she had been here, Laura’s baby bump had been barely visible, but now Natasha can feel light kicks under her hands as they touch. Her stomach pangs painfully in the wake of the memories she has only just encountered, aching for the loss of what she can never have, but she continues to smile.

“ _She’s…_ ” Laura says as she joins Natasha’s hands over her belly. “Nathaniel…” she says apologetically, looking up at Natasha. 

The smile drops mockingly from Natasha’s face as she drops down to the baby who she now knows is a boy inside Laura’s stomach. When her face is close to him, she whispers, “Traitor.”

Laura laughs, and Natasha stifles a smile herself. Oh, how she missed this place. When Clint had told her about his family, years ago, she had never imagined it would become as much her family as his. She had watched baby Lila grow into a smart, funny little girl who she loves so dearly now, and brave little Cooper, Clint's eldest son, who had got rid of the spiders that crept into Lila’s room during the autumn months. She had grown with these kids, and their parents, and they had given her so much joy in the time she needed it most. Before she got Steve, this was her home. These people, this place. So much love and so much joy.

Whilst Natasha talks with Laura, Lila has escaped towards where Thor and Steve stand, and now looks up at the former from her small height with an innocent gaze. Thor stares back down at the child, refraining from speaking, and the flashes from the vision he had experienced under Wanda's control spin in his mind.

In the kitchen, the toaster dings as it expels the now cooked slices of toast, and the visions disappear abruptly from Thor's mind. Their connotations, however, do not.

Steve sees Thor leave the room next to him and follows him. Not only does he want to find out what's wrong, but seeing Natasha so happy with Lila and knowing she might never be able to experience it herself hurts a little too much for him.

"Thor." he calls after the demigod who has exited the house and stands in the front yard.

"I saw something in that dream.” Thor explains. “I need answers. I won't find them here." 

It's not a question, it's a fact, and Steve knows there's nothing he can do to dissuade Thor. 

So, reluctantly, he watches as the god swings his hammer at a dizzying speed round in circles before using it to propel himself into the air and far out of sight within mere seconds.

Thor had seen something in his dream, but so had they all. What made the visions in his mind so important as to leave the others in order to pursue them? When Steve turns to go back inside, Peggy's voice from his dream echoes to him.

"We can go home."

Just through the doorway, Steve can see Natasha, crouched down to Lila's level, her face in animated discussion with the small girl. She's so happy. Lila laughs, and Natasha prods her in the ribs so she squirms and giggles even more, collapsing into Natasha's arms. Natasha scoops up the cackling child, continuing to tickle her as she shrieks with glee. 

Family. A home. 

Steve can see it in a far flung distance, in a ‘maybe’ he let himself dream about at his most vulnerable. But it isn't possible anymore. The only person he ever saw it with, it seems, is now in love with someone else.

And now Steve can't look, and his eyes fall away from the captivating sight of Natasha happy and playing with the children.

Perhaps home and family mean different things. Perhaps he could have a home without a family one day. Perhaps there is still a glimmer of hope. 

But for now, it wallows, faded, in a pit of despair, and Steve can stay watching the happy scene no longer. He walks away.

The morning wears on and the Avengers begin to settle down into the house. They may be here for mere hours or for days on end, no one knows at this point. Either way, they are all grateful for a warm bed and a shower.

Everyone begins to split off into their own bubbles, each going to complete something or another. Natasha has volunteered to supervise the kids, hauling out an ancient box of Monopoly from the cupboard and engaging with them, while Laura and Clint head upstairs.

There, Laura examines Clint’s genetically replicated skin from where he was hit in the field, stroking it gingerly and marvelling at the speed of its healing.

“See, you worried for nothing.” Clint reassures, looking down at where Laura touches his skin. “Can't even feel the difference, can you?”

Laura shakes her head resignedly, patting Clint’s shirt back into place and gesturing out of the door to the rest of the house. “If they're staying here, some of them are gonna have to double up.” Her mind strays to the look she had seen Steve Rogers give Natasha as she picked up Lila, and the way they had both carefully avoided each others’ gaze ever since they arrived. Something has happened between them, and Laura is desperate to find out what.

Clint chuckles at her remark, turning from her to head towards the closet. “Yeah, that's not gonna sell.” 

Her mind then strays to the looks Natasha had given the scientist, Bruce Banner, as though embarrassed but also… secret? There is _so_ much to catch up on. She needs to talk to Natasha. But she also wonders whether Clint knows anything. She decides to start with Banner.

“What about Nat and Dr. Banner? How long has that been going on?” she asks him as she follows him to the closet, putting a piece of clothing in the washing hamper.

“Has what?” Clint says innocently, and Laura laughs.

“You are so cute,” she smiles happily as the lid goes down on the hamper. 

“Nat and- and Banner?” Clint says incredulously, and then walks over to Laura animatedly. “No, no, but I thought… Steve?” He lowers his voice for the last word. 

“ _Me too!_ ” Laura hisses back. “When she came last time… well, I thought for sure!”

“Oh, oh! Sam told me, before the party and Ultron happened, he told me that he walked in on them _kissing_ when they were on the run in that mission last year!” Clint gossips to Laura like they are two teenagers, and Laura gasps accordingly.

“ _What?_ I _need_ to find out what happened between those two! And why it ended… I mean, _Banner_?” Laura emphasises doubtfully.

Clint shrugs helplessly. “I dunno. I didn’t even realise it was… they were…”

Laura grins smittenly again. “Bless you. I’ll explain when you're older, _Hawkeye_."

“Oh, okay.” Clint heads back to the closet and grabs a checkered plaid shirt, slinging it over his shoulders and shrugging it on. Laura approaches him, the jokey tone of their conversation now disappeared and her face serious. 

“It's bad, right? Nat seems really shaken.” A lump rises in Laura’s throat as she speaks, remembering the emptiness she had seen in Natasha’s eyes and the way she moved when they initially entered, and before she saw Lila. 

“Ultron has these allies, these uh, kids... they're punks really.” Clint explains. “They carry a big damn stick... Nat took a serious hit.” He meets Laura’s sad gaze and grimaces empathetically. “Someone's gonna have to teach 'em some manners.”

Clint moves past Laura towards the window across the room. 

Laura follows him. “That someone being you.” Clint doesn't answer. 

“You know I totally support your Avenging,” Laura continues. “I couldn't be prouder. But I see those guys, those ‘gods’...” Laura and Clint both gaze out of the window, to where Steve is just visible, changed out of his suit and into casual clothes, wandering the garden and a pile of chopped wood. The longer they watch, they see Tony walk towards Steve, whose muscles tense in response.

“You don’t think they need me.” Clint says, reaching down from his seat by the window to put some socks on.

“I think they _do._ Which is a lot scarier.” Laura touches Clint’s shoulder gently, before glancing out of the window to Steve and Tony again. “They're a mess.”

Clint joins Laura, observing Steve and Tony as they engage in conversation. “Yeah… I guess they're my mess.”

“You need to be sure... that this team is really a team, and that they have your back.” Laura warns as she absentmindedly runs her fingers through Clint’s hair. 

Clint stands up again to face her. 

“Things are changing for us. In a few months time, you and me are gonna be outnumbered.” Laura smiles faintly, looking down at her round belly and then back up at Clint. “I need...just be sure.”

Clint nods gently. “Yes ma’am.” 

Clint leans down and presses a kiss to Laura’s lips before wrapping an arm around her and holding her close. Laura’s arm slips around Clint’s side, where it sits on his healed wound. After a second, she smirks.

“I can feel the difference.”

* * *

When Laura comes back downstairs, the kids and Natasha are still fully immersed in the game. Smiling, she sees Lila reach across the table and grab her game token, a small silver top hat and move it twelve whole spaces. Natasha gasps in mock outrage, scolds Lila and moves it back a few to her apparently correct roll. When she looks up and catches Laura’s gaze, Laura gestures for her to come over, which Natasha does. Cooper and Lila continue happily without her.

Laura leads Natasha upstairs to her and Clint’s bedroom, which the latter has now vacated, and closes the door. Natasha flops down onto the bed, clearly exhausted, before propping herself up on her elbows to look at Laura. 

“Natasha, are you okay?” Laura asks sombrely. 

At first, Natasha’s face almost breaks out in a smile. Then she remembers that Laura can see through her, and the mask she had put on falls from her face. Laura sees this and moves to the bed to sit next to Natasha.

“I saw you when you came in. Clint said something about Ultron’s weapons? Two kids? He said you took a hard hit.”

Natasha holds Laura’s gaze for a moment, before sighing lightly. “I’m fine.” And at a look from Laura, “No, really. I am. I promise.”

“Okay, well.. then you're going to have to tell me what's going on with you and Bruce, because I’m super confused.”

Natasha inhales and leans back on the bed again at the sound of Bruce’s name.

“And more importantly, what happened with _Steve._ ”

At this, her heart plummets further. Ah, yes. She remembers the last time she had come here, shortly before her and Steve’s mission to the Lumerian Star and everything that happened afterwards, and what she had told Laura. About how close they had become, grown as friends and dancing around their feelings. 

“Last time, you told me that you were growing really close. And from what it _sounded_ like, you had a _major_ crush on him. What happened?” 

Natasha takes a deep breath in. This story is going to take a long time. And she's not even sure if she's ready to tell it. Talking about it, it would be like opening a floodgate full of memories, both of fear and hiding in that terrifying time of being on the run, and the exhilarating moments spent with him, laughing and talking, and _kissing._

“Uhh… well. Let’s see. It’s hard to…” Natasha takes a deep breath. “Well… When we went on missions together, and I was told to gather shady info on S.H.I.E.L.D... _things_ happened, I guess. After Nick’s fake death, we had to go undercover on the run. And then... I kissed him, in a mall, because, well, because I wanted to... And then it went from there... I…” Natasha's throat tightens. “I was…um... in love with him. And he was... in love with me too. I’d never… never felt that way… never _have…_ ” Natasha’s eyes now fall to the covers of the bed, unable to meet Laura’s gaze. 

“He made me so… _happy_. Even when we were running from the freaking government, fighting for our lives and everything, I still felt… I don't know, _free._ And then we almost died, and he saved my life. So many times. I would've died if he hadn't been there, I know it. And then we met Sam and we launched an attack on S.H.I.E.L.D and _so much_ happened. I was terrified that whole time, because I loved him and I couldn't lose him. Except I almost _did._ He washed up on the shore of the Potomac and everything I was scared was going to happen, happened. Just when I had let someone in, I almost lost them..." Natasha pauses before she continues. "I broke up with Steve. A little while after the Triskelion incident. I was afraid that I'd lead danger to him, just by loving him. Afraid he would die. Then I left, and went to Russia, and didn’t come back for months, until the Avengers were reassembled and… and now we’re here.” Natasha finishes with a sigh. Tired. 

“And now you’re dating Bruce.” Laura supplies.

Natasha tilts her head, evaluating. “Well… I mean, I guess. I don’t know… I don't see… where it’s going… but yeah.” 

Laura inhales deeply, breathing out of her mouth in a silent whistle. “Natasha… I’m proud of you.”

Natasha looks up in shock. “What? Why?”

“Well… you let someone in. Before this you were as stuck together as a clam, anything I got out of you I had to prise out with extreme effort.” Laura chuckles breathily. “And, yes, maybe things didn’t end the way you wanted them to, but that isn’t your fault. And it certainly isn't because you let him in. Steve in. You let Steve in.” 

Natasha doesn't answer, her gaze falling back down to her lap as she evaluates what Laura has said. It’s okay to let people in. It goes against her very being, but maybe it’s time for a change. And then she thinks of Steve.

Natasha’s gaze fixes out of the window past Laura, where she is surprised to see Steve, talking with Tony. Her eyes become hot as she watches him, remembering how warm he felt against her back, and how solid his arms felt as he carried her. She blinks back the tears that had risen to her eyes.

Laura stares back at Natasha, both evaluating and comforting, deducing and caring. 

“You still love him.” she says.

Natasha is quiet, her wide eyes still on Steve just visible outside the window. 

Her silence is as good as her answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to continue this chapter because a lot of stuff happens at this point with the Barton house scenes but since this chapter is already quite long, I'll leave it here. In the next chapter, we get to explore Steve's feelings as well as his reaction to Bruce and Natasha’s bedroom scene, and we get a bedside confession too! I'm really looking forward to it, so stick around! Again, sorry for it being so long since last update...


	10. I'm Only Looking For A Little Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! My comeback! Not really. Here with another chapter for you all, but this one might be the last for another long time I’m afraid. My exams start in December so I won’t at all have much time until Christmas to write. I will write a lot then though. I just got struck with inspiration tonight and finished off this chapter. And I LOVE it! There is some GOOD stuff in here, so I will let you read now.  
> Enjoy!

Shine a Light - BANNERS

LOCATION: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E, SAFE HOUSE, MISSOURI, UNITED STATES, 37.9643° N, 91.8318° W  
DATE: 03/23/2015

Over on the other side of the world, in Seoul, South Korea, Ultron arrives swiftly and silently in the office of Helen Cho. When she enters, he informs Cho that he intends to use the Cradle that it is in her possession to create the perfect, synthetic, humanoid body for himself, made from vibranium. When Cho bravely resists, Ultron uses Loki’s Scepter to take over control of her mind and force her to do his bidding. And just like that, Helen Cho is lost.

The sun rises higher in the sky back at the Barton house as Natasha finishes talking with Laura, changes into a bathrobe and heads into the main spare room with the primary functioning shower. She sees the door is closed and hears the shower running, and the telltale pile of clothes outside informs her that Bruce is inside. Sighing, Natasha takes a seat on the quilted bed in the centre of the room. A vague thought muses the possibility of joining Bruce in the shower, but then the darker side, still slightly rocking from her recent experiences, and the beating of her heart that quickens whenever she is in danger, like now, drowns out that playful side, rejecting it and telling Natasha that now just isn’t the time. 

So she gazes into nothing as she sits on the bed, and makes the mistake of letting her mind go quiet, and empty. Instantly, it fills with the cold images of the gurney under her body, the scrape of the clamps as they are picked up from the metal tray, the chill of fingers turning her arm to face the ceiling as a needle raises above her. The tear, small and individual, escaping her eye as she blinks.

Suddenly she feels sick.

The noises of the shower have stopped, but Natasha is too lost in her hellish thoughts to notice. Inside, Bruce battles with his own demons.

Her previous conversation with Laura filters into the flashbacks Natasha is experiencing as she sits in her bathrobe and with her spare clothes. Her conflicting feelings, both for the man behind this door who is like her in so many ways, and the one downstairs in the yard, who is so different to her. Is it a flaw, that so much separates their lives, or does it make it easier to tie them together?

Either way, one of them is downstairs, and one of them is here.

Natasha is broken from her reverie as the bathroom door opens as Bruce exits, drying off his chest with a towel. She stands as he notices her, both frozen in an awkward silence. Bruce attempts to break it.

“I didn't realize you were waiting.” he says apologetically. 

“I would've joined you, but uh, it didn't seem like the right time.” Natasha smiles a little as her gaze meets the floor.

“D- I used up all the hot water.” Bruce gestures behind him with a grimace.

“...I should’ve joined you.” Natasha revises.

“Missed our window.” Bruce chuckles breathily.

Natasha’s smile falters. “Did we?” she says, and Bruce knows she isn’t talking about the shower.

He stays silent, glancing once at the ground before reluctantly meeting her eyes again. 

“The world just saw the Hulk.” Bruce says dejectedly, moving from the doorway to where his clothes lie in a pile. “The real Hulk, for the first time. You know I have to leave.”

“But you assume that I have to stay?” she asks him heatedly. 

When he looks back up at her after sliding a shirt over his shoulders, Natasha’s mouth opens and she begins to talk, if a little hesitantly. 

“I had this, um, dream. The kind that seems normal at the time, but when you wake…”

Bruce shakes his head in confusion and slowly nears Natasha waiting by the bed. “What did you dream?” 

“That I was an Avenger.” Natasha says shortly, a weight dropping into her stomach. “That I was anything more than the assassin they made me.”

And suddenly her arms ache for something that she can’t place at first. The faint trace of strong arms around them, and around her. A hug. She just wants a hug. 

Steve was so good at hugs.

“I think you’re being hard on yourself.” Bruce says simply, stepping a little closer to Natasha again. 

The curt reply makes Natasha feel cut short, as if she yearns to prove herself to Bruce. She needs him to understand her. If he understands her, maybe he won't leave her. She leans in to him, moving her face ever so close to Bruce’s.

“Here I was hoping that was your job.” she laughs breathily as she looks up into Bruce’s face, now only inches apart.

“What are you doing?” he murmurs. The rejection stings in Natasha’s chest.

“I'm running with it... with you.” She reaches up a hand to cup Bruce’s face. His hand rises to clutch hers, and moves it down from his face. “If running's the plan, as far as you want.”

“Are you out of your mind?” His grasp on her hand turns sour as he prises it away from him, turning away from her. 

Bruce crosses the room, pacing agitatedly before he turns to her again. It gives Natasha the time to compose her face again after the hurt that had flit across it.

“I want you to understand that I’m-” she begins, but he interrupts.

“Natasha…” Bruce sees the distress on her face, and his face relaxes a little. He speaks softly, as if treading on a minefield, where something is bound to explode. “Where can I go? Where in the world am I not a threat?”

“You're not a threat to me!” Natasha reassures Bruce desperately, moving towards him in a frantic gesture.

“You sure?” Bruce asks her. “Even if I didn't just…” he looks at her imploringly. “There's no future with me. I can't ever...I can't have this…” he gestures around at the colourful paintings stuck up on the wall, little Russian dolls neatly lined up on the windowsill, a painful reminder to Natasha of her roots. Bruce continues, “...kids, do the math, I physically can't.”

He shrugs at her, unknowing of the significance of what he had said. Natasha’s eyes fix on the Russian dolls on the windowsill. The smallest one, barely the size of her pinky nail, standing the last in a long generation of their predecessors. Bruce is not the only one who will never have this. 

“Neither can I.” Natasha blinks to stave away the tears as she opens her mouth again. She is about to open herself to him, and she is scared that he will reject her like all the times before. 

“In the Red Room, where I was trained, where I was raised, um, they have a graduation ceremony.” Natasha says delicately, and her arms throb from the stifled urge to wrap themselves around her ribcage, her old security blanket, to protect her from the danger in letting her walls down. She is scared, and the memories flooding her head once again do nothing to help it. 

“They sterilize you.” she chokes out, remembering the cold of the needle and the emptiness left in her after she woke up alone. The childlike fear and yearning for a mother's touch, and then realising this was something she would never be able to give. “It's efficient. One less thing to worry about.” Natasha nods, to convince herself as well as Bruce standing motionless before her. “The one thing that might matter more than, a mission.” She smiles a small, sad smile. “It makes everything easier. Even killing.”

Because that was the belief that had been instilled in her after all. That nothing could matter more than the mission she had been tasked with. Not even her own flesh and blood. Loyalty to the crown, blood to the state. Keep going until you reach the finish and do not stop. That was the ideology that had lost her so much. And now she was here, away from Russia and the KGB, and yet she still feels the same in the eyes of this man before her. Like a hideous twisted creature, incapable of love as a result of being ripped of the ability to bear children. Inhuman. Unwhole. Damaged. 

“You still think you're the only monster on the team?” she finishes to Bruce, who has stayed vigilantly silent throughout Natasha’s confession. 

He looks at her pityingly, but says nothing, and the craving for reassurance swells in Natasha, though deep down she knows she will not get it here. 

“What, so we disappear?” he says back to her.

But Natasha feels too lost, too hurt, too confused, to reply.

* * *

Wood chips, spraying from the thud of the axe as it descends on a log of wood. Tony hauls the axe back up to his shoulder as the log splits in half and topples over to the ground. He glances up at Steve opposite him, set on his work cutting the wood, but with distracted eyes, and a mind that isn't really there. 

“Thor didn't say where he was going for answers?” Tony asks Steve as he walks over to the wood pile to pick up another log. The two have been talking for a while already, and then Steve invited Tony to join him in cutting wood, which Clint had asked him to do as a favor. 

“Sometimes my teammates don't tell me things.” Steve says bitterly, glancing up to where Clint helps his son measure a piece of wood up on the front porch of the house. “I was kind of hoping Thor would be the exception.”

Steve hauls the block of wood to a tree stump to cut it. 

“Yeah, give him time. We don't know what the Maximoff kid showed him.” Tony says sympathetically. 

Steve lifts the axe and brings it down with perhaps a slightly excessive amount of force as images of orange lights and ballrooms flash through his mind. 

He shakes his head as he lodges the axe in the tree stump and goes for another log of wood. “‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.’ Pulled us apart like cotton candy.”

“Seemed like you walked away alright.” Tony snarks. 

Indignation swells in Steve at the audacity of Tony’s comment. If only he knew. But of course not. Ignorant as he is. Steve attempts to play it cool. “Is that a problem?”

“I don't trust a guy without a dark side.” Tony says snidely, lifting his own axe and chopping the wood in front of him clean in half. “Call me old fashioned.”

So many things Tony doesn't know. Steve has to attempt to calm himself down before he just loses it. They can’t fall apart now, when they're already on the edge of their tether. “Well lets just say you haven't seen it yet.”

“You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?” Tony ignores him, speaking in a belittling voice. 

“Well I guess you'd know.” Steve says, the bitterness still bubbling like hot water inside him. He raises the axe over his shoulder again, bringing it down as he says, “Whether you tell us is a bit of a question.”

“Banner and I were doing research!” Tony defends sharply.

“That would affect the team!” Steve raises his voice to match Tony’s.

“That would _end_ the team! Isn't that the mission? Isn't that the ‘why’ we fight, so we can end the fight, _so we get to go home?!_ ”

Emotion flares in Steve, a flashing mixture of pent up jealousy watching Bruce and Natasha grow closer, and anger and confusion hovering after the vision he had had under Wanda's control, to frustration at Ultron, this horrible man-made metal monster of Tony’s own creation, that is now spent on splitting the Avengers apart! These emotions course through him, expelling themselves in a spurt through the log he holds in his hands, which he tears in two in one swift, furious movement. 

Tony looks in substantial shock at the logs dropping to the ground after Steve ripped them to pieces with his bare hands, as Steve turns to him, definitively. 

“Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die.” Steve says curtly to Tony. “ _Every time._ ”

And it’s true. And Steve knows Tony knows this, which is why he holds Tony’s conflicted gaze until Laura appears behind them and he averts his gaze.

“I'm sorry. Mr. Stark, uh, Clint said you wouldn't mind, but, our tractor, it doesn't seem to want to start at all. I thought maybe you might-”

“Yeah, I’ll give her a kick.” Tony mumbles before Laura can finish. She waits awkwardly as Tony moves his gaze from Laura’s direction up to Steve. 

Tony lurches towards Laura, a little unbalanced in his awkwardness, to accompany her towards the direction of the barn. He turns around before he leaves, gesturing from his (sizeably smaller) wood pile and to Steve. 

“Don't take from my pile.”

* * *

Afternoon rolls around, and the Avengers begin to settle into their slowly restructuring states of mind, the hours slipping by like sand through the fingers of a petulant child. The time of passage hangs heavy over Steve as he finishes the chopping of the wood, hauls it all over to the yard where it is covered with a tarpaulin. It gives him time to think, but Steve is coming to resent that time. Left alone with his thoughts, he almost always ends up in a worse place than he started.

When he heads back inside, brushing his hands off and wiping his feet on the doormat, he is greeted with a jumble of noise, a combination of kids' yelps, intermittent voices and the clanging of pans from the kitchen. Steve leaps up the stairs two at a time, planning to shower before a dinner that he expects to be coming soon. When he reaches the top of the stairs, the door to the spare room and adjoining shower is open, but the room looks like it has recently been used. He can just see the steam fogging up the mirror fading away, but the room is vacant.

As he stands still for a fraction of a second, he hears sniffling from another room. It takes him a second to gather his bearings and locate where it’s coming from, but he turns around to another door at the other end of the landing. It’s closed, and the crying is coming from there. And his heart drops in his chest because he recognises it. And she never, ever cries.

For a moment Steve is frozen, torn and unsure of what to even do. Unsure of whether to even move. Breathe. Because his heart feels so heavy at the sound of this strong woman, the strongest he has ever met and the woman he loves, crying. And his heart is heavy with the knowledge that he can't go to comfort her, and angry that he is in a situation where that is what he cannot do.

So many decisions that got them into this place. A gaping rift that opened between them ever since that dreaded night in the park, where she turned around and ended...them. 

Steve moves towards the door. So quietly he barely makes a sound, until his face is right up against the dull green wood panels. And he puts up a gentle hand against the door absentmindedly, and holds it there, listening to Natasha and her quiet hiccups, and sniffling.

He stays there for he has no idea how long, wallowing in this aching hole in his chest preventing him from opening this door, scooping her into his arms and holding her close so that she never feels alone as he is sure she does now. 

And they both stay there, Natasha on the other side of the door, alone and ashamed of her weakness, not knowing that in it there lies a strength. And Steve on the other side, hand pressed against the door as if it had the power to push through and touch her and let her know that, no, she is not alone, because he is here, and he will always be here. 

All of a sudden, the sniffling stops. Steve hears a great inhale from Natasha, and listens as she holds it. When she breathes out, she is already audibly calmer. It is then that she speaks.

“I told Bruce today.” 

Steve blanches, jumping back silently from the door in startling fear that she somehow knows he is there. Eyes wide, he waits intently, with bated breath. 

“About the Red Room. About… the sterilisation. Everything, pretty much.” 

Steve continues to stay silent, holding his breath as he tries to deduce whether she knows he is there, or is just talking to herself. Natasha continues.

“And honestly… I don't think it went well. I don't know, he just… didn't say anything. And I don't know what I expected and I don't know what I wanted, but… I just wished he would have said _something_ , is all.” Natasha confesses to herself, seemingly.

Steve, confused as ever but less fearful, takes a step back towards the door. Natasha is talking to _someone_ , clearly, but no one else is in the room… 

“And… I found myself… now this is just weird… but I wanted a _hug_. Now you know I'd never tell you this in real life, but you… you were so good at hugs.” Natasha chuckles under her breath, and then gives a great sigh. “And I wanted one of your hugs, you know, like you'd give me when we saw each other.. I don't know, after a mission or something. You know, back in the DC days. But… he just didn't say anything.”

Steve’s heart is beating a tattoo against his ribs now, because he now knows that she is talking to him... but she can’t possibly know he is here. 

"And afterwards... I couldn't stop thinking about what you had said... I know it's stupid and I know I shouldn't compare but..." And here Natasha stops, seemingly lost in her thoughts. 

On the other side of the door, swirling emotions take a long time to form a comprehensive thought in her. And it's something she has realised but not fully accepted, because to accept it would be to acknowledge it and then she would have to do something about it. And she doesn't want to. Not really. But the feeling is there and it is impossible to ignore, no matter how hard she tries. And so she says it, with a wavering voice and tears in her eyes. But she says it. 

"I just miss you."

And the impact of saying it out loud finally hits her, and she inhales sharply to stop the second flow of tears fighting to escape her eyes. "I'm sorry... It's cruel... because I'm the one that sent you away... and I feel terrible about that... but I still miss you. And there are so many things that don't make sense, and that I haven't worked out, but I just don't feel like I can go on without... ugh, I don't know.” Natasha pauses for a moment. 

“Nothing makes sense anymore. But I know that I miss you." Natasha finishes.

On the other side of the door, Steve struggles to organise the cacophony of feelings screaming inside his head, blurring his vision (or maybe that was the tears), because _she misses him_. And his chest is tight but also feels like it's about to explode, not unlike the first time he kissed Natasha, because _she misses him._

_And he misses her too._

When it becomes finally clear that Natasha isn’t going to say anything else, Steve looks at the door one last time, staring so hard as if his gaze enough had the power to bore a hole through the wood and see Natasha, the woman who he loves and misses, and the woman who apparently misses him too.

Then he turns and tiptoes away, down the stairs and out of the door into the large front yard and beyond, because he needs a moment to say thank you for this.

* * *

The next time the Avengers are united is that evening, under the dim light of the kitchen after the sun has set and the dishes are stacked up across the table, all sufficiently fed and watered after their dinner. Nick Fury appears to them after his encounter with Tony in the barn, and he calls them to meet. Assemble, if you will.

The kids, already in their pajamas, are helped by their parents to get ready for bed. The Avengers are scattered around the kitchen, Natasha at the now empty table, Steve in the doorway against the frame, Nick at the sink, Bruce in a shaded corner, Clint in the living room helping Laura round up the kids and Tony across the room by a dartboard. Thor’s absence is noted. 

“Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time. My contacts all say he's building something.” Fury explains to the tired group, most of which haven't slept in a good long while. “The amount of Vibranium he made off with, I don't think it's just one thing.”

As he speaks, Lila patters across the kitchen floor towards Natasha in her chair, a piece of paper flapping in her hand. When he reaches Natasha, she taps her on the shoulder and hands her the paper, an excited grin plastered across her little face. Natasha smiles warmly at the drawing Lila has made for her and cups Lila’s cheek with her hands affectionately to say thank you for the gift. Lila returns to her mother in the living room as Steve speaks from the doorway.

“What about Ultron himself?”

“Ah. He's easy to track, he's everywhere. Guy's multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit... Still doesn't help us get an angle on any of his plans though.”

Tony lobs a dart at the board across the room. “He still going after launch codes?”

“Yes, he is, but he's not making any headway.” Nick answers.

“I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in high school on a _dare._ ” Tony says doubtedly.

“Yeah, well, I contacted our friends at the NEXUS about that.” Nick says from the kitchen.

“NEXUS?” Steve asks with bewilderment. Natasha clamps her lips tight to stop from smiling at Steve’s cluelessness.

But this time Bruce answers him. “It's the world internet hub in Oslo... every byte of data flows through there, fastest access on earth.”

“So what’d they say?” Clint asks.

“He's fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed.” Nick says.

“By who?” Tony puzzles, but then he is distracted as a dart comes whizzing past his face and straight into the bullseye of the dartboard.

Tony looks in indignation towards Clint, who grins and shrugs as the conversation continues.

“Parties unknown.” Nick answers Tony’s previous question. 

“Do we have an ally?” Natasha speaks up.

“Ultron's got an enemy, that's _not_ the same thing. Still, I'd pay folding money to know who it is.” Nick comments.

“I might need to visit Oslo, find our ‘unknown’.” Tony suggests.

“Well, this is good times, boss, but I was kind of hoping when I saw you, you'd have more than that.” Natasha sighs, crossing her arms a little tighter and looking up and Fury with a wan smile. Nevertheless, she can't deny she has enjoyed seeing him. They have both come a long way since the graveyard in DC.

“I do. I have you.” Nick says simply. Natasha breaks the gaze. 

“Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere, ears everywhere else. Here we all are, back on earth, with nothing but our wit, and our will to save the world.” Nick looks around at the Avengers, who all stay silent. “So stand. Outwit the platinum bastard.” he finishes, taking a seat at the table with Natasha.

Natasha looks up at Steve in the doorway and smirks a little. “Steve doesn’t like that kind of talk.”

“You know what, Romanoff?” Steve retorts back jokily, and the, albeit small, lighthearted exchange lifts his heart as he smiles and sees Natasha grin back mischievously too. Nothing indicative of their earlier interaction shows on either of their faces. 

“So what does he _want?_ ” Nick brings back the attention to the matter at hand. 

Steve frowns. “To become better. Better than us. He keeps building bodies.” he says pointedly, looking around the room.

“Person bodies. The human form is inefficient, biologically speaking, we're outmoded. But he keeps coming back to it.” Tony thinks out loud.

From his shadowed corner of the kitchen, Bruce steps forward, eyebrows furrowed and eyes fixed on the picture Lila had drawn for Natasha. A simple yellow butterfly in the midst of a streaky blue sky. His mind begins forming an idea.

Natasha looks up to Bruce standing by her and then to Tony across the room. “When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you _amazingly_ failed.”

“They don't need to be protected, they need to evolve.” Bruce says, looking up at everyone who is staring at him blankly. “Ultron's going to _evolve._ ”

“How?” Nick asks.

Bruce pauses, then speaks. “Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta daaa! That took SO long to get up, so thank you all for being so patient. There were some GOLDEN romanogers moments in this chapter, and I LOVED it.  
> And also: Please. Y’all. Have sympathy for me. I know you probably hated reading this with the brutasha scenes and everything, but I had to freaking WRITE it! They make me physically SICK and I had to somehow justify their behaviour! Help! Anyways I'm so sorry for that but what comes after it is worth it I promise!!  
> Thank you for reading!  
> Save a writer, leave a review!


	11. They Judge Me Like A Picture Book: By The Colours, Like They Forgot To Read

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost: I am SO sorry for how long it has been since an update. Like I said, I had my exams, and then I thought I'd get round to writing in the Christmas break, but it never happened. It's been two months, and i'm so sorry! I lost inspiration for a bit, but i'm back now!  
> Enjoy!

Brooklyn Baby - Lana del Rey

LOCATION(S): SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E, SAFE HOUSE, MISSOURI, UNITED STATES, 37.9643° N, 91.8318° W  
DATE(S): 03/23/2015, 03/24/2015

Over in Seoul, Korea, the dim, blue light of the science lab blends with the gentle hum of machines, as the great cradle in the center of the room opens between Ultron, standing tall, and a bewitched Helen Cho.

“It’s beautiful.” Helen comments as the mechanical ring hums over what seems to be a slowly forming body. “The vibranium atoms aren't just compatible with the tissue cells, they're binding them. And S.H.I.E.L.D never even thought-”

“The most versatile substance on the planet and they used it to make a frisbee.” Ultron drawls, referencing Captain America's vibranium shield. “Typical of humans, they scratch the surface and never think to look within.”

Ultron wanders over to where one of his robots is working at Loki’s sceptre and the glowing center within it. The dull whining grows louder as pressure is exerted on the glowing stone, and then in an instant it bursts, shattering blue glass everywhere. Out of the glass rises a glowing yellow stone, so bright it hurts human eyes to look at it. The stone lands gently in Ultron’s hand and he turns and places it in the center of the forehead of the formulating body in the cradle. The stone gleams brighter for an instant, and then it sinks into the robotic body. Yellow streams of energy stemming from the stone reach down the head and neck as the stone fully embeds itself in the body, and an intense field of power seems to emanate from the cradle at the act, raising goose bumps on Helen Cho’s skin as she watches it in wonder. 

“I’ve made my monster.”

Steve swipes up his shield from the floor of the living room in Clint’s farmhouse and onto his back in a swift movement, shrugging into his newly washed suit as he turns to Tony. 

“I’ll take Natasha and Clint.” Steve says before he can stop himself. Tony looks at him a little questioningly but does not pick up on it.

“Alright, strictly recon. I'll hit the NEXUS, I'll join you as soon as I can.” he says, checking the fancy kind of scientific watch (Steve assumes it is this), as he accompanies Steve to the front door. 

“If Ultron is really building a body…” Steve says with concern, bringing back the conversation they had had before organising this mission. 

“-he'll be more powerful than any of us. Maybe all of us.” Tony says grimly as both of them stop in the doorway to face each other. “An android designed by a robot.”

“You know I really miss the days when the weirdest thing science ever created was me.” Steve smiles a little wanly.

Nick comes up to the two men standing in the doorway. “I'll drop Banner off at the tower. Do you mind if I borrow Ms. Hill?” He directs the last part towards Tony.

“She's all yours, apparently. What are you gonna do?” Tony asks Nick.

“I don't know. Something dramatic, I hope.” Nick grins cheekily, and then departs. 

In the corridor down the hall, Laura embraces Clint and says goodbye. She whispers into his hair before they break apart. “Make sure you look after Nat, won't you?”

Clint nods. “Always do.”

And so the house empties once again, and the Avengers board the Quinjet. Steve stifles a yawn and shakes his head as the chilly night air raises the hair on the back of his neck. No sleep tonight then. Well, maybe, depending on how long the flight to where Ultron is takes.

Steve takes a reluctant seat at the edge of the Quinjet as Tony takes pilot. He sets a course for NEXUS, followed by an autopilot course to Helen Cho’s research facility, U-GIN, in Seoul, Korea, and they lift off into the air. 

Steve keeps his eyes on Natasha, looking for any indication that she had sensed his presence on the other side of the door earlier in the evening. But she keeps her eyes low and untelling, her body language smooth and enigmatic. The leather of her suit shines in the dim light and Steve finds his throat going dry as his eyes follow the curve of her hips and chest. Within a moment he catches himself, surprised at why his mind had drifted this way, he licks his lips and looks away. 

Meanwhile, a million miles away, Thor arrives at the Water of Sights with Erik Selvig, determined to find out the meaning of his vision.

The journey happens to be a lot longer than Steve had anticipated. He had forgotten to take into account that they would have to drop Tony off at the NEXUS in Norway, before travelling back over to Seoul. And so, by the time the Quinjet soars over the sea and into the land of Korea, Steve’s muscles ache from underuse and the sun has risen high over them in the sky. He wakes from a long sleep, stretching with a yawn, and squints around the Quinjet. 

Sunlight streams in through the windows as the Quinjet cruises on autopilot. The only remaining Avengers on the Quinjet now are him, Natasha and Clint, Tony having gone to NEXUS, Bruce to the Avengers Tower with Nick, and Thor off to some far away land to investigate the source of his vision. The flight has been long, but as Steve quietly gets to his feet and approaches the cockpit to look out of the window, he sees the many tall skyscrapers and streets telling of Seoul. Steve turns around to look for Clint and Nat. He sees the former sprawled across the retractable med bay bed, one arm slumped across his face. Then Steve’s eyes find Nat, and he is so unsurprised to see her sitting upright in a chair, head bowed and hair covering her face, dozing lightly.

He smiles a little at how _her_ it is, before taking a deep breath. Time to wake up. Nat is nearest to him, so he walks over to her first, heart beating a little too fast for comfort, and kneels down into a crouch in front of her. At this level, he can see her eyes are closed, and he suspects she is sleeping, although it must be lightly, because he knows she never sleeps deeply if she can help it. Tentatively, he reaches out a gentle hand to just above her right knee, and jostles her a little bit. 

Natasha startles awake, her senses coming alive before she has a chance to keep up with them. Her eyes widen as she looks around in alarm, before coming to rest on Steve, and she instantly relaxes. 

“We’re here.” Steve says gently, before straightening back up, casting another glance back at Nat to make sure she is okay, and then walking over to Clint. He looks reproachfully down at the young man spread like a starfish across his makeshift bed, and with one movement, pushes him off it.

Clint falls to the floor and wakes with a yelp, Steve struggling to stifle his laughter. He feels a bit mean, but the look on Clint’s face, stricken and looking around in bewilderment, makes it all worth it. This statement is doubled when he sees Nat look over and laugh. 

“Come on, mate, we’re here.” Steve says, offering Clint a hand to help him to his feet, which he takes.

* * *

In the Water of Sights, Thor has unknowingly witnessed the formation of the Six Infinity Stones. In the U-GIN laboratory that the Quinjet is fast approaching, Ultron stares down at one of them in the head of the body in the cradle. 

“Cellular cohesion will take a few hours, but we can initiate the consciousness stream.” Helen Cho’s voice rings out, lifeless and robotic in delivery. Her eyes still glow blue under the possession of the sceptre’s influence. “We're uploading your cerebral matrix...now.”

Cho finishes attaching a thick metal cable to the back of Ultron’s neck and loads up the data stream on the cradle. Just then, the twins, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, enter the laboratory, Wanda’s eyes fixed on the cradle.

Her eyebrows are furrowed, hands reaching out slightly towards the cradle. “I can read him.” she says suddenly, her accent thickening her voice. “He’s... dreaming.” she says with a slight smile.

From over by the head of the cradle, Helen speaks. “I wouldn’t call it dreams. It's Ultron's base consciousness, informational noise. Soon-”

“How soon?” Ultron interrupts her irritably. He immediately goes back on himself. “I'm not being pushy.”

“We're imprinting a physical brain.” Helen explains. Wanda nears closer to the cradle, her face a picture of fascination as the thought streams come tapping at her mind. Helen continues to speak, “There are no shortcuts. Even if your magic gem is-”

But then she is interrupted as Wanda cries out in anguish, the image of global destruction and an earth on fire filling her head from the consciousness stream of the cradle, and Ultron.

Ultron jumps to his feet as Wanda gasps, Pietro coming to her and embracing her, looking her up and down with concern. Wanda looks at Ultron, terror and disgust tainting her young face.

“How could you?”

“How could I what?” Ultron asks innocently. 

Wanda’s voice wavers as she speaks. “You said we would destroy the Avengers, make a better world.”

“It will be better.” Ultron assures the twins.

“When everyone is dead!” Wanda exclaims in outrage.

“That is not-'' Ultron shouts in argument, but immediately calms himself. “The human race will have _every_ opportunity to improve.”

Both the twins look at Ultron reproachfully. Pietro speaks up. “And if they don’t?”

“Ask Noah.” Ultron says as explanation, referring to the fable of the man with his arc, seldom to survive in a world that was flooded by water. 

“There were more than a dozen extinction level events before even the _dinosaurs_ got theirs.” Ultron protests. “When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it, and believe me, He's winding up. We have to evolve. There's no room for the weak.” Ultron finishes his words, leaning forwards menacingly towards the twins.

His hands caress the cradle under him reverently, and his eyes are too fixed on it to notice as Wanda casts a spindle of scarlet magic towards Helen Cho, freeing her from the confines of the sceptre’s influence. She blinks bleary eyed, but Ultron thankfully doesn’t notice. 

“And who decides who’s weak?” Pietro asks Ultron.

“Life.” Ultron chuckles as if he had made a joke. “Life always decides.” 

Something above Ultron seems to catch his attention, and he looks up, “There's incoming. The Quinjet. We have to move.” He looks disgruntled.

“That’s not a problem.” Cho speaks up, her body language displaying nervousness despite her cool composure. As Pietro comforts Wanda in the corner, she steps forward to the head of the cradle and subtly pauses the upload of Ultron’s consciousness.

Ultron groans in displeasure, but then blasts Cho with an horrific beam of energy, sending her down to the floor instantly. In the corner, Wanda and Pietro look in horror and begin to run, and Ultron calls after them.

“Ah, wait, guys!” but Wanda and Pietro are long gone. Ultron then blasts Cho’s technicians with the same beam. “They'll understand. When they see they'll understand. I just need a little more time.”

Ultron yanks the cable out from the back of his neck and the connection to the cradle is lost. Him and his mindless robot lackeys wheel the cradle out of the lab and away from where they hope the Avengers will be arriving.

Speaking of, Clint has taken manual charge of the Quinjet’s steering and now the three Avengers are fully awake and active, gearing and suiting up and preparing for a fight. They know Ultron always brings one. 

Clint drops Steve off on top of the roof of the U-GIN research facility, overlooking a long highway running between the center of the city, and as Steve launches himself over the railing and onto the concrete, he speaks to the other two in the Quinjet. “Two minutes. Stay close.”

Steve swiftly and silently makes his way through the floors of the research facility, easily locating where Ultron had been by using the trail of destruction left behind. His heart jumps in his chest when he sees bodies slumped on the floor. He recognises one from the party at the Avengers tower.

“Dr Cho!” he exclaims, running over to her. She sits up when she sees him as he crouches by her and fetches a cloth from the table behind her, pressing it to the large wound across her front. She pants as he carries out this action, trying to speak.

“He's uploading himself into the body.” she whispers.

“Where?” Steve asks urgently. When he takes a moment to answer, he looks around desperately for another way to help her, but she grabs his wrist.

“The real power is inside the Cradle. The gem, its power is uncontainable. You can't just blow it up. You have to get the Cradle to Stark.”

“First I have to find it.”

“Go.” Cho urges him, and Steve doesn't hesitate. 

Up in the Quinjet, Clint and Natasha man the stations. 

“Did you guys copy that?” Steve calls through comms.

“We did.” Clint confirms grimly. Him and Nat are already scanning for transports that could be hiding Ultron and the Cradle.

“I got a private jet taking off, across town, no manifest. That could be him.” Nat speaks up.

But Clint shakes his head, looking out of the front window of the pilot’ seat down at the highway streaming below them. “There. It's the truck from the lab. Right above you, Cap. On the loop by the bridge. It's them. I got three with the Cradle, one in the cab. I could take out the driver.”

“Negative! If that truck crashes, the gem could level the city. We need to draw out Ultron.” Steve calls into his comm as he catches sight of the truck speeding in his direction, on the highway under the overpass he currently stands on.

He narrows in on the truck, estimating the time interval he has. Then he moves. Just as the truck travels under the overpass he stands on, he runs to the other side and jumps off the edge. The truck emerges out the other side, and Steve lands with a sharp jolt straight on top of the roof.

Inside, Ultron looks up in anger at the disruption. “No, no, no, no, no.” he grumbles as, outside, Steve slides himself down the back end of the truck with its two steel doors. “Leave me alone!”

Just then, Ultron blasts the double doors Steve is desperately trying to hold on to and they swing off their hinges, hurtling back until they sandwich Steve between the heavy metal, but he pushes away almost immediately so the door goes swinging back to its perpendicular arrangement. As soon as the door touches the steel metal frame, however, Ultron blasts again in Steve’s direction and he goes flying into the air, landing back down again on the broken doors that now hang behind the lorry like a ramp, sparks flying at their high speed friction with the concrete highway. Steve clings on to anything he can find to avoid being swept away by the sheer force of wind pushing him in the opposite direction.

“Well, he's definitely unhappy! I'm gonna try and keep him that way!” Steve yells through the comms. 

“You’re not a match for him, Cap.” Barton tells him, and Natasha raises her eyebrows a little behind him.

Back on the highway, Steve makes a face. “Thanks, Barton.”

Inside the Cradle, Ultron reluctantly disconnects the cable from the back of his head once more, losing the connection. He walks to the back of the truck, where Steve still hangs on to the door, and blasts him. Steve yells as he goes flying backwards and lands on the windshield of a car traveling behind the truck. The glass crunches under him as, in the center of Seoul, the Quinjet speeds over the heads of civilians, towards the truck and Steve on the bonnet of this damaged car.

There, he positions himself in a crouch, timing his jump onto a lorry parallel to this car perfectly and holding onto the wing mirror handle for dear life. He uses it to propel himself, swinging once and then letting go, and he lands on the roof of the truck housing the cradle once more

Ultron flies up from the other end to face him and Steve doesn't back down, knowing that if he is near him, he is away from the Cradle, and that is what is important. 

“You know what's in that Cradle?” Ultron directs another beam of energy at Steve, who deflects it with the shield on his back. “The power to make real change, and that _terrifies_ you.” 

Steve jerks his head. “I wouldn’t call it a comfort.” Then he swings the shield in his hands towards Ultron. It bounces off the robot as Ultron rises into the air again, raining down blast upon blast of energy on Steve as he repels them each with his shield. Steve flings the shield back at Ultron and it successfully lodges itself in his chest.

“Stop it!” Ultron yells in irritation, batting the shield from his chest so it falls from the still moving truck and skids down the motorway, far too far for Steve to summon. Ultron blasts Steve and this time he is hit, flying backwards onto the hood of the head of the truck, where he rolls until he falls straight down in front of the windscreen and the robot driver. He has a second before the robot plunges a fist through the glass and Steve swerves as the metal hand extends to right where his face has just been. Steve proceeds to swing around the side of the truck front to avoid being hit again, and drags a deep breath through his lungs.

Up in the Quinjet, it’s Natasha’s time to shine. Steve can’t handle Ultron on his own, and she knows now more than ever how well they work as a team, despite the rift forever opening between them. She slides from her seat in the ship and hurries over to the drop bay, Clint having told her what she needed would be waiting there. The hatch doors open and she sees the sleek black motorbike, shaking her head faintly in disbelief. Of course he brought the motorbike. 

“We got a window!” Clint calls back to her, and without hesitation, Nat mounts the bike, closing her hands fast around the handles and bracing herself. 

“Four... three... give 'em hell.” Clint flicks a switch above him, the doors on the underbelly of the ship split open, dropping Natasha and her bike straight onto the motorway.

Natasha lands with a jolt, taking off straight away and weaving in and between the countless cars as they zoom by. Up ahead, she sees the familiar shape of a curved shield lying between two lanes. Her heart smiles as she speaks into her comms,

“Why am I always pickin’ up after you boys?”

As she reaches the shield, she leans to the side and swipes it into her hands, not slowing down for a second. Positioning it on the front of her bike, she continues speeding down the highway. In her ear, Clint speaks,

“They're heading under the overpass, I've got no shot.” Clint says regretfully from the ship, and Nat inhales. Guess it’s up to her.

“Which way?” she yells to Clint over the roar of the motorcycle. 

“Hard right.” Clint tells her, looking to see her position on the road to time it correctly. Just as she nears an intersection with a narrow bylane to her right, Clint barks, “Now!”

Natasha swerves up the narrow road, dodging between cars, pedestrians and piles of tip rubbish. The road twists and she follows it, and restaurants and tiny shops emerge on either side of her. Civilians throw themselves out of her way as she comes and guilt makes her grimace as she goes, the wind of her passage knocking over more boxes, chairs and signs. She takes a right and the street grows narrower, so that it fits her and her motorbike and that is it, and she has to hope and pray that no one comes the other way. 

Nat emerges from the narrower passage onto a wider road, and more people dodge the squealing wheels of her bike as she jerks it straight, and then sees it. Under a bridge running parallel to the road, straight ahead: the truck, and on top of it, the rapidly moving figures of Steve and Ultron, grappling with each other. Nat crosses the road and steers under the overpass, breaking as she dives under the actual truck, between its two side sets of wheels, and comes out the other side. There, she draws up as close as possible to Steve fighting above her, and he seems to sense her presence, as she reaches for the shield at the front of the bike, and slings it up towards him. Steve catches it nimbly in his outstretched hand, mid-fight with Ultron, and uses it to smash a dent in Ultron’s arm, sending him down onto the roof of the truck. 

There, he sees Natasha driving alongside the truck and helping Steve, and he blasts the road in front of Nat’s bike, forcing her to cry out as she brakes sharply to avoid crashing. Fury erupts in Steve’s chest for Ultron targeting Nat, and he throws himself back at Ultron as Natasha does a twisting u-turn, the motorbike squeaking in the exertion. Eyes still on the truck, she follows behind it now, and Ultron’s lackeys appear at the open back of the truck and begin to shoot at her. That won't do.

Natasha sees a chance and takes it. She exits the highway and mounts a tight staircase running parallel to it, yelling for people on it to move as politely as she can as she goes. “Out of the way! Coming through! Sorry, coming through!”

They don't need to understand her language to jump out of the way of those growling motorbike wheels. 

Back on the side road where Steve still battles on top of the truck, the notorious Super Soldier is finding it hard to keep blocking the relentless blasts coming from Ultron. He misses again, and the blasts sends Steve back off the truck roof again, and smashing into yet another car’s windshield behind him. The car swerves, Ultron brings up a wave of rubble from the ground, and it spins into the air. 

It turns and turns, Steve clinging on for dear life as the cars behind it screech and crash from the massive rift in the road. Suddenly there are three cars, all spinning in the air at the same time, and Steve’s heart pounds because he knows how dangerous of a situation this is. His instincts kick in, the adrenaline setting his veins on fire, jumping to his feet and running away right before a car, towering on top of him, smashes to the ground where he had been laying only a moment ago. The ground trembles as the multiple rolling cars uproot the concrete road and Steve glances behind him as he runs to see yet another car, white this time, advancing on him, bottom facing, faster than he can escape it. Just as the car begins to nick his ankles, he jumps, landing on it, his feet balanced precariously on the underside as it goes careering down the road behind the truck. Just before it falls to a halt, he jumps from it, onto the truck holding the cradle once again, his lungs wheezing as he meets with Ultron once again. Ultron blasts him, he deflects it with a shield. Steve throws a punch, Ultron dodges. The two of them grapple together, too evenly matched, as Nat continues to run parallel on her bike to the truck and out of sight.

As she speeds past another group of people and down a staircase, she yells into her comm. 

“Clint, can you draw out the guards?”

“Let’s find out.” Clint answers up above in the jet.

Nat reaches the bottom of the stairs and sees a large group of people collecting. “Beep beep!” she calls to alert them of her presence, and they move as she glides past them. 

The Quinjet swoops in above the truck where Ultron and Steve fight, and begins pelting Ultron with bullets. Ultron takes one look at the ship and silently summons his guards to draw Clint away from his fight, hence leaving the truck unguarded. They follow Clint high up into the air as he twists and turns way above the motorway, attempting to sabotage his ship.

Meanwhile, down on the motorway, Natasha has exited the staircase byways and now weaves her way between more cars, nearing the truck she is tracking and the cradle inside it. 

In the bystreets, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff watch the action unfold on a news channel streaming from a tiny box TV, and exchange a look. It's never too late to change, right? 

Back on the roof of the truck, the road they are on has now opened up, and the roar of a train indicates that one is speeding parallel to them. There are less pedestrians and less moving cars, but still incredible danger. Natasha revs the motorbike furiously, pushing it further and further as she zooms at top speed towards the truck that is just out of sight. 

On top of the truck, Steve ducks from another blast sent by Ultron, grunting as he stumbles back in the process. He dives forward and grabs a hold of Ultron, using all his strength to fling him just like his shield, and Ultron goes smashing into a concrete pillar holding up a bridge that runs across the road ahead of them. The concrete crumbles, and Ultron rights himself in the air and lunges towards Steve, too fast to anticipate, and then they both go flying off the roof of the truck and straight into the train that runs alongside them.

The crash echoes along with screams from civilians inside the train as glass goes flying, slicing Steve’s hands and suit as him and Ultron land in a crumpled mess. The lackeys previously attacking Clint’s ship turn and nosedive back towards the truck, sensing a master in need. 

“Heading back towards you. So whatever you're going to do, do it now.” Clint tells the others.

In the train, Steve summons his shield with the deft movement he so often uses and launches it at Ultron, who deflects it, and it comes back to Steve’s hand. Ultron comes at Steve and he jumps into the air, rolling over Ultron as he skyrockets straight past him. Another blast comes at Steve and knocks him to the ground, the glass crunching under his back.

Back near the runaway truck, Natasha finally pulls up alongside, calling to Steve, “I'm going in. Cap, can you keep him occupied?”

Inside the wrecked train, Steve pants on the floor in mild exasperation. “What do you _think_ I've been doing?”

Outside, Natasha is too busy to reply. As she nears the back of the truck, she rises to her feet on the bike, timing it just so, and….

Now! She leaps into the back of the truck as her motorbike goes careering into a wall of crates holding glass. The shattering noises assault her ears as she clambers to her feet in the back of the fast-moving truck, nearing the glowing blue cradle. 

She sees the shape of the body inside and her heart pumps faster, and she begins to try and find a way to shut it down, but unbeknownst to her, the robots that Ultron had pulled back are returning to the truck, attaching themselves to the side of the body as she clicks frantically on the screen.

The truck turns a corner to be confronted with a wall of police cars and officers with the aim to stop the moving vehicle. It may not be necessary though, as the robots begin blasting from their feet and split open heads, and the cargo body detaches from the front.

Nat goes tumbling backwards with a shout as the cargo box splits completely from the head of the truck and rises into the air, tipping her backwards. She struggles to right herself, finding anything to hold onto as they rise higher and higher above Seoul.

Clint sees the flying truck and flies the Quinjet over. “The package is airborne. I have a clean shot.”

Natasha’s heart thrums in panic. Desperately she calls into her comms. “Negative, I am still in the truck!”

“What the hell are you-” 

“Just be ready, I’m sending the package to you.” Nat interrupts him, slicing the cords tying the cradle to the ground with a knife in her suit. 

"How do you want me to take it?"

“Eh, you might wish you hadn’t asked that.” Nat says apologetically.

Back on the train, Steve keeps Ultron effectively occupied. But it’s getting harder. Ultron swipes at Steve’s shield again, knocking it aside and hitting him despite his desperate attempts to hold it between them. They move backwards towards the open train doors and Steve exclaims as he realises Ultron intends to shove him out of the moving train. He aims another punch and Steve dodges, Ultron’s fist plunging into the mental wall of the train. Ultron smacks Steve in the gut, making him shout, and just as he seizes control of Steve’s body, ready to throw him, something faster than light flashes by, a blur of blue, and drags Ultron off Steve as it moves.

Steve exhales sharply in relief, looking around to see what had broken them up. He sees Pietro, one half of the twins, and as Ultron makes a dive at him, two pieces of metal surrounded with red magic block him. Steve looks to see the other half of the duo, Wanda, at the other end of the now deserted train carriage.

The four of them stand in a momentary checkmate, all looking each other down. It is clear the twins have sided with Steve, but for what reason, he doesn't know. 

“Please, don't do this.” Ultron pleads the twins, Wanda in particular, as she immobilises the metal trapping Ultron with her shimmering haze of magic. 

“What choice do we have?” Wanda says grimly.

Ultron turns from Wanda, towards Pietro, and blasts a thick beam of energy towards the Maximoff twin. Pietro dodges, and a hole is formed in the train wall, plunging through all the following walls and out to the front of the train, even through the front windscreen. Then Ultron pulls open a side door, and vanishes out into the air, leaving the rest of them with an out of control train and probably a hundred precarious lives in their hands.

An average Tuesday.

Steve yells into his comms to Nat and Clint, “I lost him! He's headed your way.” 

Steve jumps over the wreckage on the floor of the train and sprints through the hole made by the blast to the front of the train. The driver lies unconscious over the dashboard. Steve shakes him but he doesn't move, and up ahead, the railway line is ending, and it is greeted with a busy market, crammed with people.

Steve’s heart stills with the magnitude of the situation, and how unprepared he feels to manage it. 

Up in the air, Clint warns Nat.

“Nat, we gotta go.”

The Quinjet backs up to the truck in the air, both bottom ends facing, ready to take the cradle into the Quinjet. Inside the truck, Natasha prepares to slice the last bond holding the cradle steady. As soon as she fetches an expendable, timed explosive from her belt, she slices the strap, slams the explosive onto the wall with a countdown of 10 seconds, and launches herself onto the cradle as it slips down the truck floor, out of the back and towards the Quinjet’s open hatch. Just as the cradle hits the floor of the jet and breaches the entry mark, Nat feels a metal hand close around her ankle, and fear grips her. But it's too late.

In all the commotion, with the truck exploding in clouds of flames behind them and the cradle smashing its way into the Quinjet, Nat’s scream is barely heard as Ultron takes her, claims her, steals her from her team, and her family. 

“Nat?” Clint shouts in confusion, but to no answer.

On the ground, Steve is stuck handling a runaway train. He, along with the countless other passengers, scream as the train breaches the railway and goes crashing through a cargo area, full of massive containers and boxes, and people are thrown around the train, clinging on for dear life. 

Clint calls into his comm to Steve. “Cap, you see Nat?”

But Steve doesn’t hear over the cacophony of noise assaulting his ears. Unsure of how to answer, he shouts back, “If you have the package, get it to Stark! Go!”

He hears an unintelligible murmur from Clint again, which turns out to be “Do you have eyes on Nat?”

In frustration and desperation, Steve yells, “Go!”, having no idea that Clint had been trying to inform him that the person most important to him in this world had just been taken by a most formidable foe. If Steve had known, it would be fair to say that this situation would have turned out quite differently. 

Reluctantly, Clint obeys, the Quinjet soaring up and back towards the USA in triple speed. 

Back on the train, an unknowing Steve turns back to Pietro. “There’s civilians in our path.”

Pitero understands what he means instantly, and exits the train in a blur, picking people up and depositing them out of harm’s way. Steve looks to Wanda.

“Can you stop this thing?” 

She looks at him as the wind whips her hair around her face, and resolve strengthens in her heart.

The train does not slow down, and Steve tries his best as he waits for Wanda and as the train goes rocketing through back streets and byways, and towards a large, solid, brick warehouse. Steve has mere moments to act, throwing his shield up in front of him as they go ploughing into the warehouse and through it, bricks spraying around them and bruising Steve’s exposed body. The train continues at breakneck speed as it enters a busy highstreet, full of people, and fear and desperation rises further in Steve’s throat. Suddenly, something hits Steve’s shield and pushes him backwards, flying through the train back a few carriages and implanting countless bruises as he collides with poles and chairs and wrecked metal that scrapes at his exposed skin. 

Wanda grimaces, braces herself, and finally courses a massive wave of red energy down towards the train floor. It snakes down and around the engine and the wheels as she strains, Pietro still collecting people from out of the line of destruction as more cars are sent rolling, more stalls are crushed. The level of annihilation caused by this crashing train is increasing steadfast, and it terrifies Steve.

In the train, Wanda increases the pull of the magic, her hands contorting as well as her face as the magic tightens around the wheels, trying to immobilize them ever so slowly. And it is working. The train is slowing, people having time to run out of the way instead of Pietro yanking them, as it gradually skids to a halt in the middle of a destroyed road sandwiched by shops.

As the train finally stops, Steve lets out a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding. People emerge from all around and help the poor passengers disembark from the ravaged train as steam rises from above the wreckage. Over by a nearby stall, Pietro desperately tries to catch his breath, panting. Wanda reaches him, rubbing his back as he assures her “I’m fine. I just need to take a minute.”

“I’m very tempted not to give you one.” Steve says grimly as he walks over to the twins.

Wanda turns to Steve. “The cradle. Did you get it?”

“Stark will take care of it.” he assuages. 

Wanda's face falls. “No, he won't.”

Steve looks at her quizzically for a tense moment, seeing in her face that she is not lying. Doubt wavers in him. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” he tells Wanda. “Stark isn’t crazy.”

“He will do anything to make things right!” Wanda exclaims desperately, and Steve can see genuine worry in her face. It is for this reason that he turns away from Wanda, clicking his comms in his ear to activate.

“Stark, come in.” When no answer comes, he tries again. “Stark.”

A slight crackling of static fills his ear, and he suspects his comms may have broken. He tries one last time. “Anyone on comms?” 

For a moment, he hears the start of a voice, sounding like Clint’s, but it is cut off sharply. The voice has sounded like it had been saying ‘Nat’. But before Steve can ponder this, Wanda speaks again. 

“Ultron can't tell the difference between saving the world and destroying it. Where do you think he gets that?”

* * *

Without his comms working and stranded in this country with no communication to the Avengers, Steve isn't ashamed to admit he thought he was lost. But luckily for him, on arriving back at the Avengers tower, Clint had sent a solo Quinjet on autopilot and triple speed to Seoul to come and pick them up and bring them home. Steve is sitting in the wreckage of the train picking glass out of his cuts when it soars overhead, and Steve beckons frantically for the twins to follow him as he goes in pursuit of the jet.

When they board it, Steve almost runs towards the front, placing the bud in his ear holding comms onto the dashboard and reconnecting to the correct channel using the pilot motorboard instead. He twists the dials desperately as he sits in the pilot’s seat until, finally, feedback comes in. 

“Barton! Barton, is anybody there?” he calls desperately. There is a click, and Clint’s voice sounds.

“My God, Steve! Finally!”

“What happened? My comms broke when the train crashed. I'm on the jet coming back now. Listen, is Stark th-” 

“Steve, do you not know what happened?” Clint asks frantically.

Steve’s heart falters in his chest, any number of horrible possible events running through his head.

“What? Clint, tell me.”

“It’s Nat. Steve, Ultron got Nat.”

It’s a wonder the ship was on autopilot, otherwise Steve would have crashed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! Long one, mainly fighting so I apologise for that, but I hope the little stevenat bits in between made up for it. I will honestly try to become more active in writing chapters from now on and I’m so grateful for if you reach this far and have stuck with me despite all this time.  
> This chapter is for Tasha and Adi.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about any spelling/grammar errors, I'm just really bad at proof reading my work and am self beta-ed. Feel free to point any out and I'll correct them!
> 
> Sadly, I do not own the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so any identical dialogue or related entity is the property of Disney Enterprises, not me. Believe me, if I owned the MCU, I wouldn't even be writing this fic, because it would already be a reality


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